Deathstalker War (27 page)

“But what could possibly have gone wrong on a pleasure world?” said Evangeline. “There was nothing there that could hurt them. And we know they were protected from outside attack. The planetary defenses are still working.”

“We’re getting past them,” said Finlay.

Giles grunted suddenly, and sat forward in his chair, catching them all by surprise. “Pleasure worlds. Just another sign of how pampered and soft the Empire has become since my day. You need hard, driven people to keep an Empire strong. We had pleasure worlds, in my day, but they were places you went to test your mettle and your courage, a testing ground where you could grow sharper and stronger. Valhallas, where you could fight and feast and battle to your heart’s content, or at least for as long as your heart could stand it. No mock battles, either; they were the real thing. That was the point. You could die on a Valhalla, if you weren’t as strong or as skilled as you thought you were. The weak died and the race grew stronger. There was no room for weakness in Humanity then. We had an Empire to forge and protect. Now you sit in your seats at the Arenas, watching other people fight and die, and get all excited at the sight of a little blood. No wonder the Iron Throne’s corrupt. The blood’s become thin, and honor is just a word.”

“Not to all of us,” said Finlay.

“I don’t mean duels over hurt feelings, boy; I mean honor you live your life by. A cold and inflexible master you serve before Family or Throne or personal need. A duty you carry till you die, or you break under the weight of it. I gave up everything I had or ever dreamed of, to follow where duty led. Can you say you’d do the same?”

“I don’t know,” said Finlay evenly. “I don’t suppose anyone ever knows, till the moment comes. But I’ll do what’s necessary, and damn the cost. I always have.”

“Do we have to be so gloomy?” said Toby. “Let us not forget, people, that however our mission goes, we all stand to become extremely rich. The networks will pay practically any price you can think of for exclusive eyewitness accounts of the mysterious Shannon’s World. People have been mad with curiosity over what’s down there for years, even before everything went to hell. And if we’re in a position to explain what went wrong and why, we can name our own price. We’re going to be rich, I tell you, rich!”

“Or dead,” said Flynn, without opening his eyes.

“We are not here for the money,” said Evangeline.

“You speak for yourself,” said Toby.

Julian Skye listened to them argue, but had nothing to say. He didn’t give much of a damn about Shannon’s World, or its mystery. He was only here because Finlay was. And besides, he had his own worries. His headache was back again, a thick thudding pain that filled his head till he could hardly think past it. The pain came and went as it would, despite all the pills he took. The underground medics had done their best, but it hadn’t been good enough. The pain and the disfigured face were the least gifts of the Imperial mind techs. They’d opened up his head and put needles in his brain, and now he wasn’t sure who he was anymore. His courage was broken, and his certainty was gone, and what remained was less than a shadow of the man he had once been. The mind techs were very good at their job. Their procedures were advanced, secret, binding. There was no way of telling what they had done to his brain, what secret commands they might have planted in his mind.

And even beyond that, there was the possibility that their work might have been interrupted, left unfinished. That not everything had been done to ensure he would survive the process. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, in the long dark hours when the vicious pain had driven all hope of sleep from him, and reduced him to helplessness and tears, Julian wondered if he was dying, slowly, inch by inch. When the pain was really bad, he wished he could. But eventually the pain would pass, again, and then he would cling to the few motives he had left that kept him alive. He still believed in the rebellion, and he believed in Finlay Campbell, the man who had risked all to come and save him. The Campbell had given up everything to join the underground. How could he do less?

And so Julian followed Finlay wherever his missions took him, proud to be in his company, and perhaps hoping a little of the man’s courage and certainty would rub off on him. He took a little pride in the fact that they made a good team. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Evangeline Shreck. On the one hand, Finlay obviously loved her with all his heart, so she must be a remarkable and worthy woman. But on the other hand, Julian was ashamed to find he was sometimes jealous of her closeness with Finlay, a closeness he could never hope for. Still, that was love for you.

Julian hadn’t had much experience with love, and most of it had been bad. The only real love of his young life had been BB Chojiro, the dark-haired woman who’d captured his heart, then betrayed him to the mind techs the moment he revealed to her that he was secretly a rebel. She belonged heart and soul to Blue Block, the secret conspiracy of young aristocrats who plotted to seize the Iron Throne from Lionstone, and who had no time for any conspiracy but their own. Sometimes he still dreamed of her, with her jet-black eyes and perfect smiling mouth, and how he might yet give up everything just to have her love him again, and for everything to be as it was. And other times he thought he’d give up everything he had or ever hoped to have, just for a chance to get his hands around Her throat and choke the life slowly out of her. When the pain was really bad, and it seemed the long night would never end, that thought would give him the strength to go on.

His secret fear was that some day the underground would make an alliance with Blue Block against the Empress, for practical, necessary reasons. It could happen. He didn’t know what he would do then. Would he really put the whole rebellion at risk, the cause to which he had given his life and his honor, just to kill a woman who had wronged him? And when he thought that, Julian Skye would smile a cold and terrible smile, and think
Yes. Yes, I would.

He pushed the thought aside, and gritted his teeth against the pain in his head. The others mustn’t know. He had a mission here, and he would not be found wanting. He still had some pride left. Finlay trusted him to carry his weight, and he would rather die than disappoint the Campbell. He made himself concentrate on what was being said. Giles was still talking. Now there was a real warrior. There was no room in such a man for doubt or weakness. He was the Deathstalker, a warrior out of legend and out of time, when men and deeds were bigger than they were now. A man like that would break before he would bend, and die before he would break. And who could kill a legend?

Giles was still talking, but Finlay and Evangeline had stopped listening. The old man meant well, but he did tend to go on a bit. They sat together before the view-screen, holding hands because they had nothing to say to each other for the moment. They were finding being constantly in each other’s company surprisingly difficult. They were used to snatching odd moments and nights together, living for the moment because they never knew when or even if they might meet again. Now that they were part of a team, and sharing every moment day in and day out, they were finding the going hard. It exposed them to each other’s irritating little habits and petty needs, instead of the somewhat idealized images they’d previously had. But their love, though shaken, had not shattered. And if they were having problems with small everyday things, it was nothing compared to the blazing heat that welded them into one person.

Eventually Giles realized that no one was listening any more, and grumbled to a halt. He drew his sword, laid it across his knees, and polished the blade with a piece of rag from his belt. He found the slow, steady movements of his hands comforting and reassuring. Something that never changed. As far as he was concerned, this whole mission was a waste of his valuable time and skills. He was a fighter, not a spy. But even he could see the value of the information in Harker’s head, and so reluctantly agreed to the underground’s request that he join the team. All the other Maze veterans were needed elsewhere, and there was no one else he could trust to protect the team from unknown dangers. Besides, he felt a need to prove his worth to the rebellion. Being a living legend was ail very well, but just because you had been a strong man in earlier times didn’t necessarily mean you could still pull your weight. Trust didn’t come easily in the underground. Giles approved of that. And deep down, where he rarely went, Giles couldn’t help but wonder if he was still the man he remembered being. He’d been in stasis for a long time, and the universe had moved on without him. And he didn’t trust the changes the Maze had made in him. He didn’t know their extent, or even if he could depend on them. This mission would give him valuable opportunities to test his skills and his strength before the real fighting of the rebellion began. He had no doubts about his courage or determination. He was, after all, a Deathstalker. But it would be good to confirm this in the heat of rage and battle.

Giles had always felt most at home on the battlefield, where ambiguous questions of politics and loyalties resolved themselves in the clear-cut choice of life and death. Causes might change, ideals might rust, people might betray you, and love and faith and friendship might let you down, but in battle there was only a victor and a loser, and that was the way Giles liked it.

Toby fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. He wouldn’t be happy till he was safely down on solid ground again. Everyone knew this was the most dangerous and uncertain part of the mission. Theoretically, the Hadenman cloaking device should conceal them from Haceldama’s orbiting satellites, but if it failed, even for a moment, the planet’s defenses would open up, and they were all dead meat.
Theoretically?
Toby had said when this was explained to him.
What do you mean, theoretically? Hasn’t it been tested?
The man briefing them had smiled and said
You’re testing it.
Toby’s reply had been considered unhelpful.

And if that wasn’t problem enough, since Shannon’s World was officially Quarantined, it was under constant guard by an orbiting Imperial starcruiser, with orders to open fire on anyone or anything unauthorized. Hopefully, the rebels had a way around that.

“Hold on to your seats, everyone,” said Finlay. “If everyone else is on schedule, things should start getting interesting right about now.”

They all strapped themselves into their safety webbing and watched the viewscreen intently. For a moment that seemed to stretch forever, nothing happened. The Imperial starcruiser hung in orbit, not all that far away, blind to the rebels’ presence, huge and intimidating and bristling with gun turrets. And then a great golden Hadenman ship dropped out of hyperspace right on top of it. Vast and magnificent, it dwarfed the starcruiser like a killer whale next to a minnow. It opened fire with all its guns, and the Imperial craft’s force shields flared and spit, on the brink of overloading. The Hadenman ship then turned and moved gracefully away, and the starcruiser set off after it, grimly determined to deny Shannon’s World to the old Enemies of Humanity. And as the Empire ship began its wild-goose chase, the converted cargo ship dropped silently out of orbit and headed down toward Haceldama, the Field of Blood, and the horrors that awaited them there.

For long moments everything was still and quiet, and the rebels began to relax. But then they plunged into the atmosphere, and the ground-based defenses opened up on them, hammering at the small craft’s shields. The massed disrupter cannon maintained a steady barrage, shaking the small ship like a dog shakes a rat. Finlay ranted and swore, stabbing at the sensor panels trying to boost the cloaking systems as best he could while his webbing swung back and forth. But something down below had seen through the Hadenman technology, even though that was supposed to be impossible. The cargo ship rocked violently as deadly energies streamed around its shields, probing for weak spots. The rebels clung to their crash webbing as Finlay wedged himself against the control panels and fought to guide their descent. The lights snapped off for a moment, replaced by the sullen red glow of emergency lighting.

“What the hell happened to the cloaking device?” shouted Toby.

“According to the systems, it’s still working,” said Finlay. “But it didn’t exactly come with a guarantee, you know.”

“Now he tells us,” said Flynn.

The ship lurched to one side. The emergency lights flickered.

“Outer shields just went down,” Finlay said calmly. “Systems now running at 70 percent efficiency. Anyone know any good prayers?”

“Can’t we shoot back at them?” said Toby.

“We don’t have any guns,” said Evangeline. “There wasn’t any room, with all the extra Hadenman systems. Didn’t you listen when they were briefing us?”

“Obviously not closely enough,” said Toby. “I suppose escape pods are out of the question, too?”

“Think about it,” said Finlay. “If this ship can’t survive with all its shields, how long do you think an escape pod would last?”

“I think I’m about to be sick,” said Toby. “Or have a really loud panic attack.”

“Try for the attack,” said Flynn. “Less messy.”

One of the control panels exploded into flames. Finlay flinched back from the heat. The cargo ship dropped like a stone before backup systems cut in. An alarm sounded, harsh and strident, until Finlay hit the off switch. They already knew they were in trouble. The flames were leaping higher. Smoke began to fill the cabin. Evangeline released herself from her crash webbing, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and trained it on the fire. The wallowing craft threw her this way and that, making her task almost impossible. Finlay fought for control with the surviving instrumentation. At the back, Flynn was quietly getting it all on film.

And then the barrage stopped, as suddenly as it began, and all was quiet, save for the crackling of the flames. Evangeline quickly snuffed them out as the craft righted itself, and then she stood and listened, braced for more attacks. Finlay studied his panels, then let his breath out in a long slow sigh.