Deathstalker Return (44 page)

“We come here in need,” he said carefully. “Not just ours, but all Humanity’s. The Empire is endangered. The Terror has finally found us. We need to locate the missing Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d’Ark. Can you assist us?”

Giles scowled. “The Terror . . . I know things about the Terror, though I don’t know how I know them. And I know things about Owen, and what he found at the hidden heart of the Madness Maze, that no one else knows. A voice came and told me these things, two hundred years ago, after the defeat and restoration of the Recreated. It told me that Humanity must evolve, achieve its full potential, because something awful was coming, from far beyond our galaxy. The Terror. It is not life as we know it, but far more. It eats souls, and its young incubate in the hearts of suns. It brings madness and suffering, and the death of all that lives. The Terror is one and many, both and neither; an extradimensional creature beyond our understanding, and all of space and time is its prey. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Terror.”

“We’re dead,” said Brett.

“How do we stop it?” said Lewis. “We tried sending people through the Madness Maze centuries ago. It killed them all.”

“Maybe they weren’t the right people,” Giles said indifferently. “I know more about the Maze. Do you want to hear it?”

“Do we have a choice?” said Brett.

“Not really,” said Giles. “At the heart of the Madness Maze lies a great secret: the Darkvoid Device.”

“That’s it!” said Jesamine. “The Darkvoid Device snuffed out hundreds of stars and their planetary systems in a moment! That’s the weapon we need to stop the Terror!”

“It’s not a weapon,” said Giles. “It’s a child. My child, transformed and empowered in the Maze. As a baby, he created the Darkvoid in a moment of panic. He knows better now. I never got to see him, after I left him in the Maze’s embrace, a thousand years ago. But Owen saw him, and spoke with him. I never got to see how my son grew up. Perhaps you will.”

“Owen,” Lewis said patiently. “Tell us about Owen.”

“The voice spoke to him directly,” said Giles. “It told him many things. Secret things. Far more than it told anyone else.”

“This voice,” said Jesamine. “If it knows so much, perhaps we have a friend, or at least an ally, from somewhere else. Maybe even equal in power to the Terror!”

“Perhaps,” said Giles. “I have no way of knowing. It could be just the sole survivor of an earlier assault by the Terror. There are many players in this game, and only some of them have revealed their true nature.”

Lewis remembered the little gray man who’d given him the Deathstalker ring at Douglas’s Coronation. He said he was Vaughn, an old friend of Owen’s, but Lewis had seen Vaughn’s grave on Lachrymae Christi. So what was he really? A ghost? Lewis scowled at Giles’s holo, his ugly face taking on even uglier lines. Of late, Lewis’s whole life had been haunted by the past, by ghosts who refused to lie quiet, and he was getting pretty damned sick of it.

“Tell me about Owen,” he said flatly. “Tell me what happened to him.”

“Some say he’s dead. Some say he isn’t.” Giles’s holo shrugged easily. “If you want answers you can trust, you’ll have to go to Haden, to the heart of the Madness Maze, and speak with the child. Only he knows for sure.”

“Even though the odds are the Maze will madden and murder us?” said Lewis.

“Deathstalker luck,” said Giles, smiling nastily. “The Maze is the key. Everything else turns around it, and always has. You must go in, cousin. It is your destiny.”

“It might be his, but it sure as hell isn’t mine,” said Brett. “I’m not going in, and you shouldn’t either, Lewis. The odds suck, big time.”

“Don’t worry,” said Rose. “I’ll hold your hand.”

“That thought doesn’t help much, actually,” said Brett. He folded his arms across his chest and looked determinedly in another direction, his lower lip protruding sulkily.

“You know, an awful lot of people seem really determined that we should all enter the Maze,” said Jesamine. “A suspicious—or even only partly paranoid—person might well suspect that we are being manipulated. Guided. Used, by other people, for their own purposes.”

“I just had a really spooky thought,” said Brett, so taken with his new idea that he forgot he was busy being upset and outraged. “What if . . . what if it’s the Madness Maze itself that’s behind all this? Could the Maze, or the child within, have been manipulating events all along from behind the scenes, just to bring a Deathstalker back to it?”

“You’re right, Brett,” said Lewis. “That is a really spooky thought. If you have any more thoughts like that, do feel free to keep them to yourself.”

“Look, if we really are going to go to Haden, and I still hope and pray that an outbreak of rational thought and good sense will prevail so that we don’t have to,” said Brett. “If we really are going to that bloody hellworld, it is one hundred percent guaranteed certain to be quarantined and very heavily guarded. You can bet serious money that Finn will have reinforced the usual patrols with every nasty and vicious defense he’s got. We are talking starcruisers, orbiting minefields, battle espers and mindbombs. Which means if we really are going, we’re going to need powerful weapons of our own. So how about it, Giles? You got anything here we can use?”

“Go out of here, by the main doorway,” said Giles. “Follow the signs, down the corridor and down nine levels, and you will come to a stash of First Empire high tech and weaponry, held inviolate behind a stasis field for over a thousand years. Even I don’t know what’s in there. The real Giles inherited it from his ancestors, long before he assumed the Deathstalker name, and either he never got the chance to use it or he never found the nerve to try. First Empire tech can be very dangerous. We have all fallen a long way since those days.”

“First Empire weapons!” said Brett, all but rubbing his hands together. “Oh, people, we are talking serious
serious
money here!”

“Shoot first, make money later,” said Lewis. “Let’s take a look.”

“Say good-bye first,” said the holo of Giles Deathstalker. “We won’t be meeting again. This Standing has come to the end of its days. The castle was badly damaged, inside and out, even before Jenny Psycho nursed it here and crash-landed it in the jungle. Systems are failing, the power plant is fading, the very stone is crumbling. I activated the systems one last time, in service to Clan Deathstalker. Now, it is time . . . for me to rest. Allow me to wish you all good luck. You’re going to need it.”

The silver spotlight snapped off, taking Giles with it, and without them the great and empty hall seemed much darker.

“Castles can be rebuilt,” said Lewis. “Systems can be repaired. Power plants can be replaced. Whatever happens on Haden, I will come back for you. You are the history of my Family.”

He waited, but there was no reply. Jesamine tugged urgently at his sleeve.

“I really think we should get moving, darling. If the power plant is on its last legs, there’s no telling how long we’ve got before everything starts shutting down again. I definitely don’t want to be stumbling through these corridors in the dark. We might never find our way out.”

“Wonderful,” said Brett. “Something else to worry about. I know, shut up, Brett.”

“I hoped I’d have more time,” said Lewis. “To walk the passageways and galleries of the original Standing of my Clan; to feel like a real Deathstalker . . . But there’s never enough time for all the things we need to do. Let’s go.”

As they left through the main doorway, a glowing arrow appeared, floating in midair. It drifted away before them, and they followed it through many intersections and down nine levels. Lewis kept careful note of all the twists and turns, just in case. Rose was walking point beside him again, gun in hand, while Jesamine and Brett followed behind. Guide brought up the rear. He hadn’t spoken a word since they entered the great hall. He had been made an observer in his own world, a bit player in someone else’s story, and he didn’t know whether to feel bitter or overawed. Great forces were at play here, and perhaps the best he could hope for was to be overlooked, when gods went to war.

They came at last to a solid steel door with no obvious handle or lock mechanism. The floating arrow disappeared. Brett was all over the door in a flash, checking it minutely from top to bottom, but eventually had to admit that there was nothing there for him to work with. He kicked the door in frustration, and then hobbled away to lean on Rose and cry bitter tears as he massaged his bruised toes. Lewis looked at the door for a long moment, and then said his name aloud. The door swung silently open before him, revealing the familiar blurred shimmer of a stasis field. And then that snapped off, like a bursting soap bubble. And inside . . .

“What the hell is this shit?” said Brett.

“Tech, of some kind,” said Lewis.

“But I don’t recognize any of it!” wailed Brett. “There’s nothing here that looks like anything I’m familiar with, and I’ve been around. I thought there were supposed to be weapons here! Big, nasty weapons!”

“Some of it could be weapons,” said Rose. “Let’s try turning a few things on, and see what happens.”

“Let’s not,” Jesamine said, very firmly. “There’s no telling what some of this . . . stuff might do. And I really don’t think we should turn anything on until we’re sure we can turn it off again.”

They all looked at the enigmatic shapes and forms laid out before them—obscure structures of glass and steel and crystal, and other materials that couldn’t easily be identified. Lights came and went, strange energies pulsed, and here and there pieces moved in unsettling ways, rotating through strange angles, and none of it made any sense at all. Just looking at some of it made their heads ache, as though they were looking at things too complicated—or too subtle—to be understood without some really sophisticated equipment as a mediator.

“This is why Giles never used any of it,” Lewis said eventually. “Even a thousand years ago, this would have been beyond him. We forget just how advanced the First Empire was, and how far we’ve fallen since then. Maybe . . . our Empire is doomed to fall too. Only this time, there won’t be anyone left to start the long climb back up again . . .”

“I just had a spooky thought,” said Jesamine.

“Oh, don’t you start,” said Lewis.

“No, listen: could the Terror be something left over from the First Empire? Some awful Doomsday weapon they unleashed, and then couldn’t shut down? Maybe that’s why the First Empire fell?”

“I don’t think so,” said Lewis. “If I’m understanding what the voice said correctly, the Terror is older than that, from
outside
our galaxy . . .”

And then the whole castle shook around them. They all clung together as the floor bucked and heaved under their feet. New cracks appeared in the stone walls, and dust fell from the ceiling. The stasis field reestablished itself, and the steel door slammed shut. Alarms sounded, harsh and blaring, and Giles’s voice said, “The Standing is under attack. Force shields have been activated. Weapons systems . . . are offline. Stardrive is offline. Available power cannot support full shields for more than two hours, twelve minutes. Sensors detect unusual energies operating.”

“Show me what’s happening!” yelled Lewis.

A viewscreen appeared on the air before them, showing a series of views of what was occurring outside the Standing. A wide area of jungle including the castle’s clearing was being blown apart by a battle barge hovering overhead. Energy blasts stabbed down again and again in a substantial barrage, toppling trees and incinerating the vegetation. Fires were burning everywhere, filling the sky with thick black smoke. Misshapen creatures were running everywhere, panicked by the fire and the noise and a threat most of them could barely comprehend. Disrupter fire picked many of them off as they ran. More attack ships were dropping out of the sky, adding their firepower to the assault. The main attack was centering in on the clearing, the grassy earth being systematically blown away to reveal the castle beneath. And right there in the heart of the mayhem, whooping and howling as they darted in and out of the energy beams, thirteen gravity sleds bearing men and women in familiar armor and purple cloaks.

“Paragons!” said Lewis. “I don’t believe it . . .”

“Unusual energies are attacking the force shields,” said Giles’s voice. “Systems are collapsing, malfunctioning. I am being targeted. My mind is under attack.”

“Can you still maintain the shields?” said Brett.

“Not for much longer. Get out while you can.” Giles’s voice sounded almost apologetic. “I will protect you for as long as I can. I am built to serve Clan Deathstalker, even to the death.”

Lewis led the way back through the stone corridors, running now, as the castle creaked and groaned and shuddered around them. Already the lights were going out, and sometimes the artificial gravity flickered on and off, sending the party staggering this way and that. Guide caught them when they would have fallen, his eight legs skittering easily over the bucking stone floor. The alarm cut off. It wasn’t telling anyone anything they didn’t already know. Cracks in the walls lengthened and widened, and sometimes the walls bulged slowly, the ancient stone buckling under the strain. The roar of the power plant under their feet became ragged and uncertain.

“Are the force shields still holding?” said Jesamine as she ran hand in hand with Lewis.

“If they weren’t, we’d all be dead by now,” said Lewis when Giles’s voice didn’t answer. “The castle’s been inert for too long. It wasn’t ready for an attack like this.”

When Lewis and his companions finally made it back to the hole in the outer wall they’d entered through, they found Saturday sheltering there, his foreclaws flexing helplessly as he glared at the attackers outside. Lewis pushed past the reptiloid to see for himself. The roar of engines was deafening, and the air was thick with smoke and the stench of burnt vegetation. Ships filled the sky for as far as he could see, energy beams stabbing down like malevolent lightning. The thirteen Paragons shot back and forth on their gravity sleds, cheering on the destruction.