Deathstalker Coda (27 page)
Authors: Simon R. Green
“Of course,” said Randolph. “We know what it is, really. It is the enemy. The old Beast, from Revelation. When is faith more necessary than when going face-to-face with the enemy?”
“I was given the chance to volunteer for your mission,” said Vardalos. “I didn’t.”
“I should hope not,” said Randolph. “You’re young. Still got most of your life ahead of you. This is a mission for those . . . with little left to lose. I’m just glad I’m going out doing something that matters.”
“There is that,” said Habib. “We’d have hated being retired.”
“The Lord sends us out, and He calls us all home.”
“Aye, well, he’d better have a bloody cup of tea waiting.”
“Be quiet, you heathen,” Randolph said kindly. He looked searchingly at Vardalos. “I take it you have heard the latest rumors? That a whole fleet’s gone rogue at Haden?”
“Yes,” said Vardalos. “They say . . . they say Owen has returned. The blessed Deathstalker himself, back to lead us against the Terror, just like all the old legends always said he would. I wish I could believe it . . . but it doesn’t sound very likely, does it?”
“Hell, no!” Randolph said grimly. “It’s just a dirty Shub trick. The tech they’ve got, they can make people believe anything. Always knew we couldn’t trust those soulless robots. I lost all my grandparents to Shub, back when they were still the official enemies of Humanity. No, if the blessed Owen really had returned, we’d all know about it. He wouldn’t sneak back on some backwater planet; he’d appear on Logres, working miracles. And if he didn’t want Finn on the throne, he’d kick him right off it. No . . . it’s a nice dream, Ariadne, but that’s all it is. Enough chat now. Our brand-new sensors say we can expect the herald to show up pretty soon now. Talk to you later,
Heritage
. This is
Hook,
signing off.”
Heritage
. This is
Hook,
signing off.”
And after that, there was nothing left but to wait. The comm center became overloaded with pleading messages from civilians in the domed cities on Usher II. No one knew how many people were trapped down there, but it had to be in the millions. There was nothing
Heritage
or
Hook
could do for them. They were both under strict instructions to do nothing that might endanger their missions. In the end, Captain Vardalos just stopped listening. Faith and loyalty were all very well, but in the end it always came down to the heavy weight of duty.
Heritage
or
Hook
could do for them. They were both under strict instructions to do nothing that might endanger their missions. In the end, Captain Vardalos just stopped listening. Faith and loyalty were all very well, but in the end it always came down to the heavy weight of duty.
She summoned up an image of the cargo bay on her private viewscreen. The only thing in the cavernous hold was the alien superweapon, and its foul poisonous presence seemed to fill the steel chamber. The weapon had been reverse engineered from seized alien technology, and it looked it. If the device did everything the human scientists claimed it would, it should be able to transform one of Usher II’s binary suns into a supernova, and then channel all the terrible energies into a single vicious strike against the herald. Nothing material should be able to survive that; not even something that incubated in suns. And without the herald to prepare its targets, the Terror might not be able to feed . . .
Vardalos didn’t trust the weapon. She didn’t trust it to do what it was supposed to do, and she didn’t trust it not to have some nasty alien surprises up its sleeve. Just looking at it made her feel uneasy. She scowled at the thing in her cargo bay, squatting on the steel floor like a malignant toad. It was big and blocky, but apart from that no one could be sure of its shape or nature. Its edges were blurred, as though it had too many angles for human eyes to focus on. No one liked to be near it. It upset people. The technicians who brought it on board wore armored hard suits, so they wouldn’t have to actually touch it. Vardalos would be glad when she could dump the horrid thing, and be rid of it. But until then, she had her orders.
And perhaps it would take an alien-derived horror to stop the Terror.
Unknown to either the
Heritage
or the
Hook
, a third starship was studying Usher II from a distance, and waiting for the Terror to arrive. Donal Corcoran, aboard the
Jeremiah
, had come a long way to satisfy his need for vengeance. The madman in his mad ship, undetected by the Imperial craft because both he and the
Jeremiah
had become too different, too
other
, to show up on even the strongest sensors. Corcoran and his ship had witnessed the first appearance of the Terror, at the planet Iona, and the experience had changed them both forever. Corcoran had escaped from a high security asylum on Logres to be here, at Usher II, because when the Terror disappeared after destroying Iona, it took part of his mind with it. Corcoran was linked to horror, and always would be. He followed that mental link to Usher II and now he waited for a chance to hurt the Terror, punish it, destroy it for what it had done to him.
Heritage
or the
Hook
, a third starship was studying Usher II from a distance, and waiting for the Terror to arrive. Donal Corcoran, aboard the
Jeremiah
, had come a long way to satisfy his need for vengeance. The madman in his mad ship, undetected by the Imperial craft because both he and the
Jeremiah
had become too different, too
other
, to show up on even the strongest sensors. Corcoran and his ship had witnessed the first appearance of the Terror, at the planet Iona, and the experience had changed them both forever. Corcoran had escaped from a high security asylum on Logres to be here, at Usher II, because when the Terror disappeared after destroying Iona, it took part of his mind with it. Corcoran was linked to horror, and always would be. He followed that mental link to Usher II and now he waited for a chance to hurt the Terror, punish it, destroy it for what it had done to him.
Corcoran roamed restlessly through the twisting corridors of his insane ship, a gaunt and haggard man, burning with a terrible energy that drove him on even as it used him up. He did not eat and he did not rest and he did not sleep, though sometimes he thought he dreamed. He had lost confidence in all the everyday certainties of reality, which meant he could sometimes walk through it, and even manipulate parts of it to serve his will. He had conversations with people he was pretty sure weren’t really there, and they told him useful, frightening things. Sometimes he laughed and sometimes he cried, and he counted his fingers over and over again. Horror was his constant companion, his life a nightmare from which he could never awaken.
He could feel the Terror drawing closer, rising slowly up from some awful underworld, to surface in reality.
He was a rogue, an unexpected factor, come for revenge. Looking for a chance to destroy the Terror, and perhaps himself. He stalked the shifting, changing corridors of the
Jeremiah
, surrounded by whispering voices that rose and fell but were never still. He couldn’t tell whether they came from the ship or his own mind. Sometimes he thought they were the voices of the dead, all the millions of lost souls who had died screaming to fill the Terror’s endless hunger, still crying out in protest. Sometimes he heard things and sometimes he saw things, and he prayed and prayed that none of them were real.
Jeremiah
, surrounded by whispering voices that rose and fell but were never still. He couldn’t tell whether they came from the ship or his own mind. Sometimes he thought they were the voices of the dead, all the millions of lost souls who had died screaming to fill the Terror’s endless hunger, still crying out in protest. Sometimes he heard things and sometimes he saw things, and he prayed and prayed that none of them were real.
The
Jeremiah
was alive; he knew that for sure. Animated and aware, transfigured in some strange way by the gaze of the Medusa, by the pitiless stare of the Terror. It was infected with madness, with the horror of uncertainty, and its interior and exterior were always changing, growing, mutating. For the moment, the
Jeremiah
was a long segmented silver worm, curled around itself, and its interior was composed of a soft, sweating metal studded and laced with unfamiliar machines. Corcoran didn’t need to know what they did. The ship followed his intentions, if not his commands. When he thought about it at all, Corcoran thought the
Jeremiah
was growing itself a new nervous system.
Jeremiah
was alive; he knew that for sure. Animated and aware, transfigured in some strange way by the gaze of the Medusa, by the pitiless stare of the Terror. It was infected with madness, with the horror of uncertainty, and its interior and exterior were always changing, growing, mutating. For the moment, the
Jeremiah
was a long segmented silver worm, curled around itself, and its interior was composed of a soft, sweating metal studded and laced with unfamiliar machines. Corcoran didn’t need to know what they did. The ship followed his intentions, if not his commands. When he thought about it at all, Corcoran thought the
Jeremiah
was growing itself a new nervous system.
There were shadows everywhere, filling doorways and sliding along the walls, though there was nothing to cast them. Corcoran kept a careful eye on them. New tech was always forming, drifting like dreams through the superstructure of the ship. Sometimes they had faces. There were no mirrors, or mirrored surfaces, anywhere on the ship. Corcoran wouldn’t allow it. He was scared he might get a clear look at what he’d become. Or, that he might look in a mirror and find nothing looking back at him.
He called up a monitor screen, and one grew up out of the nearest wall, showing him Usher II hanging between its two suns, and the two Imperial ships holding their positions, and finally the herald moving silently through empty spaces. Corcoran hugged himself tightly, and whispered,
Here be monsters
. The dreaded warning old cartographers used to add when they came to the edge of things that could be mapped. He tried to laugh, but it was a dark, disturbing sound.
Maybe it takes one monster to kill another
, he said, or thought he said. He cocked his head to one side, and considered what it would be like, to stare the Terror in the face again. Just one indirect glance had been enough to do this to him. He knew he was mad. That was part of the horror. Was there a worse madness, beyond insanity?
Here be monsters
. The dreaded warning old cartographers used to add when they came to the edge of things that could be mapped. He tried to laugh, but it was a dark, disturbing sound.
Maybe it takes one monster to kill another
, he said, or thought he said. He cocked his head to one side, and considered what it would be like, to stare the Terror in the face again. Just one indirect glance had been enough to do this to him. He knew he was mad. That was part of the horror. Was there a worse madness, beyond insanity?
It didn’t matter. He would do what he had come here to do, whatever the cost. Part of him was trapped inside the Terror, and he wanted it back. He wanted to stop feeling what the Terror felt. The endless horror and loss that drove it on, the need that never ended . . .
Donal Corcoran had come to sink his teeth in the Terror’s throat, to worry and to harry it, and pursue it all the way back to whatever Hell it came from.
The herald appeared on the Imperial ships’ sensors, and they got ready to confront it. The herald always arrived ahead of the Terror, traveling through normal space at sublight speed. Its shape was indescribably ugly. Its distorted form made no sense at all. The Empire scientists’ best bet was that the herald was just a cross section of something bigger, and more awful. An intrusion into normal space of something that did not belong there. It appeared out of the darkness like a bad dream made solid, and headed straight for the nearest of the two suns.
On board the
Heritage
, Captain Vardalos grimaced, sickened just at the sight of the thing, and ordered the cargo bay doors opened. The preprogrammed superweapon launched itself out of the bay like a bullet from a gun, as though it couldn’t wait to be about its destructive business. It accelerated away from the
Heritage
, its shape changing, unfolding and blossoming like some poisonous flower. It plunged into the sun the herald had targeted and disappeared from sight in the silver-blue glare. It should have been destroyed instantly, but it was still sending data back to the
Heritage
. Vardalos had a sick presentiment of how the herald would look, plunging into the sun to give birth to its awful progeny.
Heritage
, Captain Vardalos grimaced, sickened just at the sight of the thing, and ordered the cargo bay doors opened. The preprogrammed superweapon launched itself out of the bay like a bullet from a gun, as though it couldn’t wait to be about its destructive business. It accelerated away from the
Heritage
, its shape changing, unfolding and blossoming like some poisonous flower. It plunged into the sun the herald had targeted and disappeared from sight in the silver-blue glare. It should have been destroyed instantly, but it was still sending data back to the
Heritage
. Vardalos had a sick presentiment of how the herald would look, plunging into the sun to give birth to its awful progeny.
There was a sudden explosion, which everyone on all three starships felt rather than saw or heard, and then the sun convulsed. It swelled unevenly, spitting out ragged solar flares millions of miles long, and then it collapsed in upon itself, shrinking impossibly quickly. The
Heritage
and the
Hook
shuddered, fighting to hold their positions as gravity waves fluctuated all around them. The sun became a red dwarf, hot and sullen, and then before it could collapse further into a black hole, all its compressed energy lashed out in a single terrible beam of light so bright that no one could look upon it. All the ships’ viewscreens went blank instantly, overwhelmed.
Heritage
and the
Hook
shuddered, fighting to hold their positions as gravity waves fluctuated all around them. The sun became a red dwarf, hot and sullen, and then before it could collapse further into a black hole, all its compressed energy lashed out in a single terrible beam of light so bright that no one could look upon it. All the ships’ viewscreens went blank instantly, overwhelmed.
The searing energy beam hit the Terror’s herald head-on, enveloping it in shimmering fires. A sun’s entire life, compressed into one endless moment of unbearable force. And then the beam blinked out, exhausted, and the herald was still there, untouched. Only now it was headed towards the sole surviving sun.
The
Heritage
and the
Hook
rocked behind their force shields, blind and helpless. Tech exploded and fires broke out in all the corridors and departments. Crewmen died in their seats as their consoles exploded, and smoke filled the air faster than the extractor fans could deal with it. Men and women ran frantically back and forth, doing what they could, while steel bulkheads buckled and whole sections had to be closed down and isolated, for the good of the ships. Somehow, both starcruisers held their positions. Captain Vardalos and Captain Randolph barked orders till their voices were hoarse, and slowly, gradually, the ships’ systems came back on line. And they were able to see what had happened to Usher II.
Heritage
and the
Hook
rocked behind their force shields, blind and helpless. Tech exploded and fires broke out in all the corridors and departments. Crewmen died in their seats as their consoles exploded, and smoke filled the air faster than the extractor fans could deal with it. Men and women ran frantically back and forth, doing what they could, while steel bulkheads buckled and whole sections had to be closed down and isolated, for the good of the ships. Somehow, both starcruisers held their positions. Captain Vardalos and Captain Randolph barked orders till their voices were hoarse, and slowly, gradually, the ships’ systems came back on line. And they were able to see what had happened to Usher II.
The planet had been devastated. It rocked in place before its sole remaining sun, no longer held between two equal forces. Solar flares had cooked the surface, and gravity waves had dug crevices thousands of miles deep. Earthquakes were still rippling across the surface. Cities blew apart as their force shields collapsed, showing briefly like firecrackers in the night. The cities died, and millions of people died with them. Usher II was coming apart at the seams. Even the last of the escaping civilian ships had been caught up and destroyed in the terrible forces unleashed by the superweapon.
“So many dead,” Vardalos said quietly. “And all for a weapon that didn’t do a damn bit of good anyway.”
“You have to think of it as a mercy killing, Captain,” said her second. “Consider what the herald and the Terror would have done to them.”
“What have we come to?” said Vardalos. “When something like this can be seen as mercy?” She turned to look at her comm officer. “Are you picking up anything from the planet? Maybe something from the factories buried deep underground?”
“I’m sorry, Captain.” The comm officer didn’t even look at his board. “Usher Two is as silent as the grave. No one made it through.”
“Then it’s time for us to fall back, and let the
Hook
do her work. Second, what do the damage reports say? Can we get out of here?”
Hook
do her work. Second, what do the damage reports say? Can we get out of here?”
“Main force shields are still holding, though severely depleted,” said Fortuna. “Eighty percent of systems are on line, though large sections of the ship are no-go areas. Initial reports indicate . . . acceptable losses.”
Vardalos nodded slowly. “Then release the sensor drones, and deploy them as planned. Put as much power into the shields as you can, and shut down all ship’s sensors. From now on, we don’t look at anything directly, only via the drones. And let’s hope the baffles the scientists installed work the first time. Second, move us out of here, as fast as we can go and still maintain contact with the drones. Our job’s over. It’s all down to the
Hook
now.”
Hook
now.”
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