Deathstalker War (15 page)

“Not so far. But he’s an old man, and it’s a long way to come for him. Even if he can get through the madness in the streets.”

“Damn. He’s the only other person on the Council I can trust to do the right thing. I’ll bet you there are some damn fools already talking about negotiating a surrender with honor.”

“Look on the bright side,” said Cyder. “At least this time we don’t have to worry about Typhoid Mary running loose.”

“No,” said Investigator Topaz coldly. “You don’t.”

Steel and Cyder both looked around sharply as Topaz and Mary made their way through the crowd to join them at the bar. People moved quickly to get out of the way of the two women. Even the danger of an invasion hadn’t blinded them to common courtesy and the need for self-preservation. Steel gave them his best professional, everything’s-under-control smile, but neither of them looked in the least impressed, so he dropped it. Cyder glared at Mary, one hand rising unconsciously to the thin scars on her face, legacy of their last meeting, when Mary had nearly killed Cyder with a single deadly song. Cyder never had been one to forgive or forget.

Steel decided he’d better get the ball rolling before things started getting seriously out of hand. “About time you got here, Investigator. I’m putting you in charge of the city Watch, as from this moment. You know more about how the Empire fights, and how best to face them, than anyone else. Give whatever orders you feel necessary, requisition anything you need, and we’ll argue about it later. I want every single warm body in the Watch out on the streets ten minutes ago, and no excuses, dammit! Spank a few if you have to.

“Your first objective is to clear the streets of all non-essential traffic. With the comm systems down, we’re going to have to rely on runners, and I don’t want them having to fight their way through panicking crowds. So, clear the streets. Break a few heads if you have to. Next, track down everyone who’s got some kind of weapon and send them out to guard the boundary walls. Tell them to hold as long as they can, and then fall back street by street. Hopefully by then I’ll have thought of something else to do with them.”

“Shouldn’t you clear this first with the rest of the Council?” said Mary.

“That bunch? I’ve seen better-organized anarchists’ meetings. They’ll back me up, once they’ve calmed down a little. Why are you still standing here?”

“Anything else?” said Topaz, entirely unmoved by Steel’s glare.

“Well, if you can work a miracle, this would be a really good time to prove it,” said Steel. “And, Topaz, whatever happens you are not to let Mary out of your sight for any reason. She’s too powerful to be allowed to operate as a loose cannon.”

“I understand,” said Mary. “All I want is to help, Director.”

Steel looked at her narrowly. “Half my espers can hardly think with this new Empire device jamming their powers. How come you’re holding out so well?”

“My mind is still my own, Director. I was and am a very powerful Siren. The Council’s deprogramming didn’t take that away from me.”

“Not for want of trying,” said Steel. “All right, stick with Topaz, and if you have to use your voice, make sure you’re pointing it in the right direction. Now get out of here, the pair of you. I’ve got a city to defend.”

Only a few hours after Legion was forced to drop its disguise, the first Empire troops came flying out of the icy wastes beyond the city, hundreds of them crammed onto armored gravity sleds and barges. They came in waves, more and more of them, soaring over the boundary walls as though they weren’t even there. A few disrupter bolts lanced upward, only to be harmlessly deflected by glowing force fields. An Imperial attack usually centered around heavily armored battle wagons and war machines, but the cold and the snow and the ice of Mistworld slowed them down too much, and most were too large anyway to maneuver in Mistport’s narrow streets, so the softening up of the city fell to the Imperial air divisions. They came howling out of the darkening skies like so many rabid bats, sleek and deadly, disrupter bolts stabbing down again and again, lighting the streets bright as day as the energy beams exploded buildings of stone and wood and set the ruins ablaze. People ran screaming in the streets as the barges sailed serenely overhead, carrying death and destruction and the coming of Empire rule.

The gravity sleds chased people down the streets, whipping in and out between the narrow buildings, harrying and terrorizing their prey until they grew tired of their sport, and cut the runners down with flashing energy bolts. The air divisions pressed on, leaving fire and devastation behind them, until suddenly espers came flying up out of the streets to face them.

The esper union had pulled its strongest minds together and pushed aside Legion’s block for the moment. They knew it wouldn’t last, but for now they struggled with Legion and held it back, so that a hundred brave souls could fly on wings of esp up to meet the invaders on their own high ground. The espers whipped around the slower-moving Imperial craft, darting in and out too fast to be tracked. Some had energy guns, some had crossbows, some had nothing but naked steel and their own indomitable courage. Force shields crackled and failed around the gravity barges as down in the streets espers strained to hex their tech and drain their power batteries. Imperial troops screamed and fell from their craft as the fast-flying espers took their toll, sniping at unguarded targets, but the air force was just too big and unstoppable, and its targeting computers soon came on line, taking out the flying defenders one by one, for all their speed and courage. They fell out of the dark sky like burning birds, and the air force pressed on.

More espers came soaring up out of the streets to take the place of those who fell. With their city endangered, their way of life threatened, and their backs almost literally to the wall, many in Mistport found courage and honor where they would have sworn there was none, and went to the fight with calm eyes and grim determination. They lunged and soared, using familiar updrafts and hiding places to confound the targeting computers, stinging their targets like deadly insects.

Some deliberately threw themselves into the gravity barges’ engine bays, suicide attacks that were only occasionally successful. When a barge did fall from the sky, it crashed into fragile stone-and-timber buildings, crushing them with its immense weight. Exploding barges destroyed whole streets and spread fire across whole blocks. And for each barge that fell, there were always more to take its place, moving remorselessly forward about the city they had come to take.

They moved slowly inward from every side, creating paths of death and destruction, heading for the center of the city, block by block, street by street. They kept to their previously arranged paths, ignoring the rest of the city. The Empire had come to conquer and control Mistport, not destroy it.

There were fires burning all across the city now, flames leaping high into the night sky. Screams came drifting up from the streets below. Hell had come to Mistport, and Toby Shreck and his cameraman Flynn were right there in the thick of it, keeping up a live broadcast. Flynn’s camera darted and soared above the inferno of the burning streets and blazing buildings, getting it all, while Toby kept up a breathless running commentary. This far above the devastation, it was easy to feel detached and godlike, but Toby did his best now and again to remind his audience that real people were burning and dying in the fires and ruins below. Not that most of them would care. That just added to the excitement for the home audience.

Toby clung to the railings at the edge of the gravity barge as the boiling heat of a sudden updraft rocked the barge from side to side. Flynn was so taken with what he was seeing through his camera that he quite forget to hold the railing, and almost toppled over the side before Toby grabbed him and pulled him back. The cameraman didn’t even nod his thanks. He was far away with his darting camera, swooping and soaring over the rising flames like an impartial angel recording the birth of Hell.

“Getting good footage?” asked Toby loudly in Flynn’s ear.

“If only you could see what I’m seeing,” said Flynn. “People have seen war footage before, but never this close, never this clearly. I can zoom in on individual buildings, individual people, or pull back to a panorama of the whole damned city. It’s beautiful, Toby. The scarlet and gold against the black of night. The burning buildings, and the flames . . . it has a majesty and a grandeur that’s beyond pity or compassion. It doesn’t need excuses; it just is. A city is dying one inch at a time, and I’m getting it all. The colors are amazing—bright and primitive and striking. And the roar of the explosions is like a giant walking across the city, one great step at a time, as the ground shakes beneath his tread. It’s . . . exhilarating.”

“Smell the smoke,” said Toby. “That’s burning flesh amongst the wood and grime. Listen to the screams. Don’t get carried away, Flynn. This isn’t an invasion; this is a slaughter.”

He broke off as a flying esper came howling out of the darkness toward him. The esper was armed with an automatic crossbow, jury-rigged from forbidden tech, and his deadly bolts stitched across the armed men at the railings as they tried in vain to draw a bead on him. They fell back from the railing, crying out as they clutched at transfixing arrows. Toby grabbed Flynn and threw them both to the deck. A nearby disrupter cannon turned to bear on the next building, and the esper was suddenly hovering there before it. He thrust his arm down the barrel, blocking it. Toby looked up, and their eyes met. The esper grinned savagely, scared shitless and not giving a damn, and then the bomb in his hand went off, blowing the cannon apart. The esper was thrown backwards, blood fountaining from the shoulder where his right arm had been. He fell toward the street far below, laughing breathlessly. Toby watched him fall until he disappeared back into the smoke and the flames.

Lieutenant Ffolkes came staggering down the deck toward Toby and Flynn, stepping gingerly over the injured and the dying. He had a gun in his hand, and there was blood spattered across one sleeve of his uniform. It didn’t appear to be his. He looked over the railings, and nodded calmly at the burning city as though quietly satisfied.

“You’re really missing the best of it from down here,” he said casually. “I trust you’re getting good coverage?”

“Oh yes,” said Toby, climbing carefully to his feet. “Right up close and personal, some times.”

Ffolkes looked at him. “The Empress might have ordered it, Shreck, but I’m still in charge. Follow your instructions. Nothing . . . controversial, or I’ll shut you down.”

“Got it,” said Toby. “Nothing controversial. Just blood and death and burning buildings.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Ffolkes. “Carry on.”

And he strode away to upset somebody else. Toby made a rude gesture at the man’s departing back, realized that Flynn was still lying on the deck, and hauled him to his feet. The cameraman was still lost in what his camera was showing him through his comm implant. Toby could have patched it to the frequency through his own comm link, but didn’t. It was all he could do to cope with what he was already seeing.

In his room on the top floor of the Blackthorn Inn, as yet untouched by the invasion, Owen Deathstalker crawled across the floor on his hands and knees, shivering and shaking. His head hung down, hot and heavy, and sweat dripped from his contorted face. Pain blazed in all his muscles, sharp and piercing, and shuddered in his gut. He was blazing hot, his thoughts slow and muddy as the pain inside him tore him apart. He lurched on, inch by inch, as though trying to run away from the agonies that stretched his mouth in a soundless grimace. He didn’t scream. He wouldn’t let himself. He was a Deathstalker. He couldn’t let anyone see him like this. His shoulder crashed into the leg of a table, and he knocked the obstacle away with one sweep of his arm. He tried again to vomit, but he’d already emptied his stomach. He’d crawled through most of it.

The trembling had started as he made his way up the narrow stairs behind the bar. At first he’d put it down to reaction at his nearly having died, or the strain of fighting off so many attackers at once. It had been a hard day, after all. But it got worse. His head swam and his sight became blurred. His hands shook violently, and his legs became increasingly unsteady, until he was lurching along like a drunk. Somehow he made it to the top floor, and pressed his shoulder against the wall as he went, to keep him upright. His room seemed a long way away, but he got there, and even managed to shut the door behind him before he collapsed and began to puke up his guts.

His head crashed into a new obstacle. He hardly felt it, and it took him a while to realize that he’d reached the far wall, and there was nowhere left to go. He got himself turned around, grunting at the horrid pain, and put his back to the wall, sitting more or less upright. The pain was worse if anything, and he felt like he was burning alive. The room was a blur, and he could feel helpless tears trickling down his cheeks.

“Dear God, what’s happening to me,” he said, and was shocked at how weak he sounded.

“Side effects from your constant boosting,” said Ozymandius. “I did warn you. Whatever the Madness Maze did to you, you’re still human. You’ve been boosting too often and for too long, and it’s finally caught up with you. The candle that burns twice as brightly burns half as long, remember? You’ve been relying on the Maze’s changes to repair the damage you’ve been doing to yourself, but it seems you still have limits. Human limits. Your body’s been burning itself up, and you’ve nothing left to put out the flames.”

“There must be something I can do . . .” said Owen, forcing the words out through chattering teeth. He was hot and cold by turns now.

“I’m afraid your options are rather limited, Owen. You could boost again, but it would only make things worse in the long run. A regeneration machine might be able to repair the damage, but I don’t know of any in Mistport. Or you could throw yourself on the mercies of what passes for medicine on this planet, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Dammit, Oz . . . help me!”