Deathstalker War (19 page)

“Wonder where they’ll send us next,” said Flynn, after a while.

“Somewhere where things are going rather better, I should imagine,” said Toby.

“Assuming there is such a place.”

“Bound to be. The defenders just got lucky here, that’s all.”

“I don’t know,” said Flynn. “What were the odds of a gravity barge just happening to fall on the war wagons?”

Toby looked at him. “What are you implying? That the rebels brought it down in some way? Forget it. They don’t have that kind of weaponry. And if you’re thinking of espers, even the infamous Inspector Topaz her own bad self couldn’t have brought down something that big. Espers just don’t come that strong. And that’s without Legion scrambling their minds.”

“This is Mistport,” said Flynn, darkly. “I’ve heard things about Mistport. Never wanted to come here in the first place.”

“It’s certainly full of surprises,” said Toby. “Did you see who was leading the rebel forces? Jack Random, looking just like his old holo pictures. Only, if that’s Jack Random, whom did we see leading the rebel forces on Technos III? That man looked a lot older, and harder used. And I don’t believe he could have got from there to here, in so short a time. Not without the Empire knowing.”

“Maybe one of them’s a double. Or a clone.” Flynn scowled. “Either way, there’s a lot to this story that we’re not being told.”

“Nothing new there,” said Toby. “If we run across him again, maybe we can pin him down for an interview. I could name my own price for a piece like that. Prime time, guaranteed.”

“The powers that be, and intend to keep on being, would never let you show it.”

Toby grinned. “Where there’s a wallet, there’s a way.”

In the labyrinthian heart of Thieves Quarter, in the Blackthorn Inn, representatives of the esper union were fighting to keep track of what was happening. More people were arriving all the time, filling the crowded room, as news poured in from all over the city. The Council members, minus Albert Magnus, were still poring over the great map of Mistport, studying the situation with darkening scowls. The news was rarely good. The esper reps showed the positions of the gravity barges and sleds as small black shadows drifting over the map. Espers flying up to fight them showed as bright burning sparks. The sparks tended to blink out suddenly after a while, and no one needed to ask why. More shadows showed at the boundaries of the city, where the Empire forces had breached the boundary walls. The dark stains spread inward as the invading forces pressed on into the city despite all the defenders could do to slow or stop them. The shadows were holding only at the southwest boundary, where news of an unexpected victory was beginning to drift in.

Chance’s children lay huddled on blankets in one corner of the room, keeping up a steady, quiet babble of information and warnings as Chance moved among them, cajoling and praising and bribing them with bits of candy. Any one of them he left alone for too long tended to drift into waking nightmares, screaming and howling piteously. The esper union reps were hiding the Blackthorn’s position and inhabitants with their superior mental abilities, but even they couldn’t protect the Abraxus children from the horror of Legion. The never-ending scream, rasping in their minds and souls like the scrape of bone on bone, or the tearing of living meat No one knew bow the children experienced it, but the look on their small faces as they mewled despairingly and twisted in their blankets was enough to keep anyone from asking. Chance pleaded with the Council to let him sedate the children, but the answer was always no. They were too useful.

A few espers teleported in and out with important messages, appearing and disappearing in puffs of disturbed air. Static sparked around them, discharging painfully through the nearest metal. They were risking their lives with every jump, and everyone knew it. Legion’s scream was interrupting their concentration. Some never arrived. Just blinked out in one location, and were never seen again. Some arrived at the inn in pieces, or horribly rearranged. One materialized half inside the tavern wall. He was still there, protruding from the brickwork. No one could figure out how to remove him without tearing the wall apart. Luckily he was dead, so they just draped a cloth across his face to hide the staring eyes and contorted mouth, and pretended he wasn’t there.

And one man fell out of midair and slammed to the floor in a sticky mess of spurting blood and exposed organs. His journey had turned him inside out. Horribly, he wouldn’t die. In the end, Donald Royal cut off the head with one merciful stroke of his sword.

The Council members and the esper union reps struggled to put some kind of planned defenses together, but things were happening so quickly all the time that all they could really do was react to the Empire’s actions and provide damage limitations. Raised voices were getting hoarse, and tiredness showed in everybody’s eyes. Cyder kept hot coffee and mulled ale moving among everyone in the room, and supplied a steady stream of information from her own network of informers, people she used to work with in the past, before she became respectable. She tried not to worry about what had happened to Cat. And overhead, the roar of passing gravity barges shook the inn like thunder, never knowing how close they’d come to the heart of rebel resistance.

Kast and Morgan dragged their prisoner through the chaos and fury of battle to see Investigator Razor, as he stood thoughtfully in the rubble of what had been the northeast boundary, watching his troops press deeper into the burning city, sweeping aside all opposition. He waited till the marines and their captive were almost upon him before turning and acknowledging their existence. His dark face was calm as ever, but there was a hot and brutal fire in his eyes that made even Kast and Morgan nervous. They bowed quickly to the Investigator, and hit their prisoner till he did, too. Razor studied the man in silence for a long moment. The prisoner dressed well, though his fine clothing was currently rumpled and torn and stained with his own blood. His face was bruised and battered. It seemed that Kast and Morgan had not been gentle in persuading him to come along with them.

“And this is?” Razor said finally.

“A traitor and informer, sir,” said Kast cheerfully. “Name of Artemis Daley. Something of a mover and shaker in Mistport, if he’s to be believed. He’s promised us useful, not to say vital, information if we’ll just avoid destroying the properties here he has interests in. He’s even volunteered to give us a map showing those properties. Isn’t that helpful of him? Under a certain amount of pressure, he also volunteered to draw us another map, showing exactly where the city Council is currently hiding out. In return for his life and continued well-being. So we brought him to you, sir. If he is who he says he is, and knows what he says he does, he could be very valuable. And if you were to see your way clear to giving my friend and me recommendations on the strength of that, sir, or even a raise in rank, well, we were just doing our duty.”

“But we’ll still take the raise,” said Morgan. “Or any medals, if they’re going.”

“You have done well,” said Razor. “Now be silent.” He smiled slowly at the prisoner, who if anything seemed even less reassured than before. Razor stepped closer, studying the man’s face. “I know you, Artemis Daley. You’re in our files. A deal-maker, money-lender, and leg-breaker, as necessary. Medium-sized fish in a very small pond. You’ve sold us the odd bit of information in the past. Nothing terribly important, but enough to make you as one of ours. Talk to me, Artemis. Tell me where my enemies are.”

“We . . . have yet to agree on a price, your honor,” said Daley, trying hard to keep his voice steady. “I am, after all, just an honest businessman, trying to make a profit in difficult times. I have no interest in wars. But a man in my position can’t afford to just give away valuable information. Word would get out. My reputation would be ruined. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Quite,” said Razor. He looked at Kast. “Kill him.”

“Wait! Wait!” Daley tried to back away, but Kast and Morgan held him firmly. They forced him down onto his knees. Daley shook so hard that drops of sweat fell off his face. “Wait, your honor! Allow me to . . . give you a little something, as a sign of good faith. The Council can be found at the Blackthorn Inn, in Thieves Quarter.” He looked anxiously at Razor. “I’d be happy to draw you a map, your honor, showing exactly how to get there, but it’s a little hard to draw when you’re on your knees . . .”

“We have our own maps,” said Razor. “And we have all we need from you.” He nodded to Kast and Morgan. “Make an example of him.”

Kast and Morgan nodded cheerfully, and dragged Daley away. He kicked and struggled, but didn’t even slow them down. “You can’t do this! I’m an important man here! I told you what you wanted! I told you . . .”

He kept shouting till Morgan hit him over the head with the butt of his gun. He was still mumbling protests when Kast and Morgan strung him up from the nearest lamppost and stood back to watch him dance in midair. Razor’s smile was bitter. He had no time for traitors. He watched the hanging man die, and wondered when Clan Chojiro’s agents here would make contact with him.

The first the people in the Blackthorn Inn knew of its targeting was when the disrupter beams began hammering down from the gravity barges hovering directly overhead. The slate roof blew apart, and the upper floor of the inn was suddenly a mass of flames, sweeping rapidly through the private rooms, burying the few inhabitants alive and swallowing their screams in the roar of the fire. The energy beams plowed through the upper floor and plunged on into the main barroom below, where they rebounded from a psionic screen erected at the very last moment by the espers within. Chance’s children had come through with a last-second warning. The espers in the barroom were representatives of the esper union, and some of the strongest minds in Mistport, and together they held off the disrupter cannon. But even they couldn’t save the Blackthorn.

The upper floor was a raging inferno. The barroom’s timber ceiling began to blacken and smolder. The whole ion was shaking from the pounding it was taking. Bricks cracked, and fine streams of dust and mortar began to fall. The barroom quickly became stiflingly hot. The espers could do nothing. It was all they could do to fend off the disrupter beams. Donald Royal barked orders, getting people organized. He had them block off the back stairwell with tables and other furniture, in case the flames from above broke through the closed door. Cyder produced buckets of water, in case of sudden flash fires. Chance’s children were screaming almost continuously now, but he still didn’t dare sedate them. They might yet have to run for it.

A few people cracked and ran for the main door. Random yelled after them, but they wouldn’t listen to him. They ran outside, and energy beams blew them apart the moment they appeared. More gravity barges drifted overhead, adding their firepower to the onslaught raging down on a single building. Every building around the inn was already a mass of flames and pulverized rubble. There were dead men and women in the streets, their bodies blackening in the growing firestorm.

Inside the Blackthorn, a timbered beam broke away from the ceiling supports and slammed down like a giant hammer, crushing Lois Barron beneath it. The heavy weight pinned her to the floor, and blood gushed from her mouth as she beat feebly at the wooden beam with her hands. It was obvious she was dying, but the others continued to try and lift the heavy beam off her, until she finally lay back and was still. The dwarf Castle sat beside her and held her dead hand, oblivious to everything. McVey and Royal couldn’t allow themselves time to mourn. As the only remaining Councillors, they had too much to do. If anyone was going to find a way out of this trap, it would have to be the two of them.

And that was when the psionic shield began to weaken and break apart. Even the strongest minds in Mistport found it hard to function with Legion’s endless scream in their heads. Their power was burning up, and so were they. Blood trickled steadily from their noses and ears. The greatest esp-blocker the Empire had ever made beat against their minds and, inch by inch, it shut them down. Cracks appeared in the shield. Thin bolts of energy stabbed through the barroom ceiling, transfixing people here and there like insects on pins. And then one energy beam hit and killed the strongest esper, and the screen collapsed.

Immediately Jenny Psycho reached out with her mind and pulled the screen back together again. She had hoped she wouldn’t be needed. Once she revealed her presence, she had no doubt Legion would turn all its attention to her, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could beat the unnatural thing. But she did what she had to do, taking all the pressure upon herself as one by one the other espers collapsed and died around her. Very soon the strain was almost unbearable. For all her strength, Jenny Psycho was no match for the many minds that made up Legion. If she and everyone else in the barroom were to survive, she was going to have to be more than just Jenny Psycho.

And so she reached inside herself, to that brightly shining place once touched by the Mater Mundi in the dark cells of Silo Nine. She called out to the uber-esper, the Mater Mundi, Our Mother Of All Souls, to come and manifest through her again, and pull all the espers in Mistport together into one great gestalt that would drive Legion and the Empire from Mistworld. She called, and no one answered. Jenny screamed then, a bitter howl of outrage and betrayal and despair that for a moment even drowned out Legion’s endless scream. For as far as she could reach with her mind, there was no trace of the Mater Mundi, only the bright sparks of Mistport’s espers blinking out one by one, and that awful thing that was Legion, slowly turning its full attention upon her. The Mater Mundi had abandoned her.

Jenny Psycho held together through sheer willpower. She had to. So many people were depending on her. Her brief touch by the Mater Mundi had made her one of the strongest espers the Empire had ever seen, but even so it was all she could do to hold off the many-in-one that was Legion. The pain was almost unbearable, but she wouldn’t give up. If the Council were to die, resistance in Mistport would quickly fall apart, and the Empire would win. Jenny turned inward, cutting off all contact with the outside world, focusing all her will and concentration on maintaining the psionic shield. She stopped hearing the screams of people dying in the streets around the Blackthorn Inn, as the disrupter beams stabbed viciously down, killing everything that moved, spreading fire and destruction. She couldn’t afford to be distracted. The psionic shield was her whole world now.