“It’s all gone wrong,” she said sharply. Her voice was painfully rough and harsh again, sounding just as it had when she damaged her throat screaming her sanity way in Wormboy Hell. “We hit the Recreated fleet with everything we had, and barely slowed it down. I helped the massmind of the Mater Mundi join with the AIs, and together we tried to force mental contact with the Recreated; to shock them awake and sane, as we did with Shub. But it didn’t even come close to working. Contact ... wasn’t possible. The Recreated are too strong ... too angry, too insane ... too strange. It was like staring into a sun that never stops screaming. Whatever the Recreated are, they’re far beyond anything we can hope to comprehend or deal with.
“The Mater Mundi is in shock, blasted back into its component parts, reeling on the edge of sanity. No use to us, at least for the time being. Just touching the edges of such deranged fury was enough to shatter the esper union. I had to become Jenny Psycho again, in self-defense. It was the only way to deal with such a threat to my ... soul. If I think too much about what I ... saw, and felt, I think I’d start screaming too, and never stop. Shub came off best, because they couldn’t manage any kind of contact; the sheer weirdness of the Recreated had no common ground with their logic. That protected the AIs from the psychic backlash. Right now, everyone who can fly a ship or aim a gun is charging down the throat of the Recreated fleet, weapons blazing. We’re trying to slow them down, to buy you some time to pull one last miracle out of the hat. But don’t take too long to come up with something, Deathstalker, d‘Ark; every minute we buy for you is being paid with human lives and suffering.
“But you’re not alone. Captain Silence and the
Daunt
less should be there with you by now. Try to forget old enmities, Deathstalker. Humanity is in dire need of help, and we don’t much care where it comes from.”
The signal suddenly became blurred and distorted, Jenny Psycho looking sharply back over her shoulder at something offscreen. For a moment, Owen and Hazel could clearly hear the horrid, never-ending scream of the Recreated in the background, and then the signal was shut down from the other end. Owen shuddered briefly, unnerved by the very sound. He would have liked to say something comforting to Jenny, but he had no idea what. What can you say when the fate of your whole species lies in your hands, and you don’t have one damned clue what to do? Owen chewed the inside of his cheek, scowling thoughtfully. He hadn’t come into the Darkvoid again to fight Humanity’s last battle; he’d returned to the Wolfing World to deal with old, unfinished business. The Madness Maze was now back, apparently, and the baby in the crystal at the heart of the Maze was waking up. Since the last time he was awake he put out a thousand suns in a moment, destroyed billions of lives, and created the Darkvoid, Owen felt he had a responsibility to return, and do what he could. If only because, as Giles’s clone, the baby was Family.
But now Silence and the
Dauntless
were on their way too, and that complicated things. Owen had no doubt as to why the good Captain had been sent into the Darkvoid again. Parliament wanted that legendary weapon, the Darkvoid Device, to use against the Recreated. An obvious, if desperate, gamble. But Parliament and Silence had no way of knowing the Device was just a baby, beyond any hope of manipulation or control. The one time Giles had tried to use the baby’s powers, to deal with a few rebel planets, he had become responsible for the greatest case of murder in human history. Who knew what the baby might do, if he was allowed to wake again ...
“Well?” said Hazel, not liking the silence or the look on Owen’s face. “Are we going to contact the
Dauntless?”
“Not just yet, I think,” said Owen. “I think we need to get down there first, and appraise the situation, before Silence and his people arrive to confuse the hell out of things. I mean, all we know is what the Wolfing told us. He could be mistaken. Or lying. Or ...”
“Or?”
“Precisely. I’ll move us into a suitable low orbit, where we’ll be less easily detected. You try again to raise the Wolfing on the comm.”
Hazel shrugged, and turned back to the comm panels. She hadn’t forgotten the last time Silence came to the Wolfing World, in pursuit of the price on their heads, and ended up destroying the Madness Maze, as well as trying to kill her and the other Maze people. They’d all made a kind of peace over Lionstone’s body, in the Hell she’d made of her Court, but that had been politics, nothing more, and they’d all been careful to maintain a respectful distance, ever since. Some wounds and divisions can only be healed by time. Lots of it.
Owen moved the
Sunstrider III
into low orbit, his mind meshing easily with the ship’s computer systems through his comm link, operating the navigation systems directly by his thoughts. When Moon rebuilt the
Sunstrider III
around the previous ship’s stardrive, he hadn’t been able to resist bringing the computers up to his own more-than-human standards. Once, Owen would have needed an AI to interface between his thoughts and the computers, to avoid unfortunate foul-ups through drifting attention, but a more disciplined mind was only one of the changes the Maze continued to work in him. He still missed Oz, though.
He settled the ship into a suitable orbit, raised all the shields, carefully disengaged his mind from the computers, and turned to Hazel. She’d pushed her chair back from the comm panels, and was shaking her head angrily. She glared at Owen and folded her arms sulkily across her chest.
“He must be able to hear us, but he’s not answering. If I put any more power into the comm signal, the planet would start to melt. Maybe he’s mad at us for not getting here sooner. Hell, maybe the baby woke up and disappeared him. We’ve no way of knowing what’s going on down there!”
“No,” said Owen slowly. “I think we’d know if the baby was awake. Either we’d feel it ... or the universe might just start unraveling around us. As long as reality continues undisturbed, I think we can assume the baby is still safely sleeping. Wulf’s probably just being precious; keeping us waiting till he’s ready to talk to us. He never did have much use for humans.”
“Well, we did wipe out all his species but him,” said Hazel. “That had to make an impression. Giles was the only human the Wolfing ever had any time for. And you killed him.”
“Quite,” said Owen. “Let us hope very fervently that Wulf doesn’t bear grudges. In the meantime, we’d better change our clothes. Our present attire, apart from being decidedly bloody and tattered from our time among the Blood Runners, is entirely unsuitable for the chill of the caverns of the Wolfing World.”
“You know, you can be really fussy, sometimes,” said Hazel, following Owen reluctantly into the cramped lounge area behind the bridge. “I mean, the Wolfing isn’t going to care what we look like.”
“I care,” said Owen firmly, opening the clothes locker and rooting dubiously through the limited selection. “I am the Deathstalker, and I will not appear before the Wolfing looking like some tramp. It’s a question of dignity.”
Hazel sniffed, loudly, and decided to reject the first three things Owen showed her, on principle. There wasn’t that much choice, really, the locker’s stock being limited to what Moon and Owen had been able to acquire from Saint Bea’s Mission and the original Church ship, but eventually Owen and Hazel settled on suitable clothing they could both live with, topped with heavy cloaks to keep out the cold. Hazel paused briefly as Owen swung his cloak about him, and admired himself in the locker’s full-length mirror. The hackles on her neck were standing up. She’d seen Owen in that cloak before; on the two occasions when he’d appeared suddenly out of nowhere, first to save her life in the Standing on Virimonde, and then again later in the Mission to try and warn her about the Blood Runners. He’d been wearing these very clothes, but had looked tired and hurt and desperate. A slow chill wrapped itself around Hazel’s heart as she began to understand what that meant, what it had to mean ...
She might have said something, but suddenly every alarm on the bridge went off at once. Owen and Hazel ran back onto the bridge and bent over the control panels, looking for trouble. Nothing was obviously wrong, until Owen thought to check the sensor readings.
“It’s a proximity warning,” he said slowly. “Something’s coming our way ... something big. And it’s moving bloody quickly.”
“Could it be Silence, on the
Dauntless?”
said Hazel, one hand dropping automatically to the gun at her hip.
“I don’t think so. The sensor readings make no sense at all. I’m switching to long range. That should put something on the viewscreen.”
Shapes began to appear on the screen, and Owen sucked in a sharp breath. Hazel was strangely silent, moving to stand as close as she could to Owen. On the viewscreen, great shapes were gathering beyond the Wolfing World like vultures over something dying. Huge ships, the size of mountains or small moons, with insane structures and convoluted shapes that sucked the eye in uneasy directions. There seemed no real edge or end to them, as though they were still, always, just dropping out of hyperspace into normal reality. And between and around these awful ships, strange monstrous shapes; alive, aware, and completely unprotected in the cold vacuum of space. Some were almost as big as the ships, vast alien creatures with eyes like spotlights, and barbed tentacles that stretched for miles. There were claws and teeth and staring eyes in repulsive entities the size of cities, that shouldn‘t, couldn’t, exist. They shone with their own unhealthy light, vast shapes and horrid creatures without number, gathering silently on all sides of the beleaguered planet.
The Recreated had come to the Wolfing World.
“Jesus,” said Hazel softly. “We are in deep shit. Look at the size of those things ... This just isn’t possible ... I mean, how do they even survive out there without ships?”
“This is where they live,” said Owen. “Their home. Maybe they don’t need ships, here. But there’s something ... wrong, about those monsters. There’s no way they evolved in open space. Claws, tentacles, and eyes are planetary aspects. They must have evolved on some world, originally.”
“Typical historian,” said Hazel, without heat. “I don’t give a damn about the Recreated’s past, I want to know what they’re doing here, right now. And may I also remind you we don’t have any guns on this miserable cobbled-together rustbucket?”
“Probably just as well,” said Owen. “They’re not actually threatening us, as yet. With our shields up, we may be too small to draw their attention. Start shooting at them, and we might just get them interested in us. I think I’d like to avoid that, if at all possible. I say we stay very calm and very quiet, and hope they overlook us.”
Hazel sniffed. “For once, I find myself in complete agreement with you. I don’t think even a full-sized starcruiser would last long against that many nightmares. But how are we going to get down to the planet, without them noticing?”
The viewscreen chimed politely, making them both jump, alerting them to an incoming message. Owen quickly changed the screen from sensor input to the comm systems, and the disturbing gathering on the screen vanished, to be replaced by the great shaggy head and shoulders of the Wolfing. The skull had a definite lupine quality, but the face was still unsettlingly human. Wulf smiled, revealing sharp and unpleasant teeth, his eyes fixed and direct, a predator’s gaze.
“I’ve been waiting for you to get here, Deathstalker. We must talk. There are many things we need to discuss, before the end.”
“The end?” said Hazel sharply, just a little miffed at not being addressed too. “The end of what?”
“Everything, possibly.” The Wolfing didn’t seem too upset at the prospect. His grin widened, showing even more teeth, looking less like a smile all the time.
“Is it the baby?” said Owen. “Is he waking up?”
“Oh yes,” said the Wolfing, almost casually. “And has been, for some time now. He was sleeping so very deeply, and he’s had a long rise back to consciousness. But soon he will be fully awake, and by then we must have decided what to do. Join me, and we will talk of many things, before the end.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Hazel said acidly, “we are currently surrounded by all kinds of weird shit, some of them with teeth you wouldn’t believe, and with the good God only knows how much firepower between them. How are we supposed to get to you?”
“The teleport systems are still working,” Wulf said calmly. “The Deathstalker installed them long ago, and they still function. Giles always planned for the future. When you are ready, I’ll have them bring you to me.”
Owen shut off the comm sound for a moment, so he could talk privately with Hazel. “Now that is interesting. I’d always assumed the Last Standing teleported us down to the planet, the last time we were here; not the other way around. The power in those old systems must be incredible. I wonder what other surprises my dear departed ancestor might have left behind.”
Hazel frowned. “Speaking of the departed, do you suppose Wulf knows Giles is dead?”
“He must, by now. And that I killed him. He just might be inviting us down so he can take his revenge on me.”
“Let him try. He’s big, but we’ve been through the Maze.”
“So has he. More than once. Just because we never saw him manifest any powers, it doesn’t mean he hasn’t got any.”
Hazel frowned. “Now that is an unpleasant thought. All right; how do you want to play this?”
“Very carefully. And extremely diplomatically.” Owen turned the sound back on, and smiled cheerfully at the Wolfing. “We’re ready to come down, Sir Wulf. Will our ship be all right, up here alone, surrounded by the Recreated?”
“It’s too small for them to be concerned with,” said the Wolfing. “The Recreated are always here, in the Darkvoid. They belong here. They may leave, but some are always here.”
Owen frowned, as a thought struck him. “We never saw any sign of them, the first time we passed through the Darkvoid.”