Deathstalker d-1 Page 3

  And then she was out of the tunnel, and the heat fell away from her like a burning blanket. She'd made her way through the obstruction. She was back in the open corridor, and the cool air was like a blessing. She lurched to her feet, gritting her teeth at the pain in her hands and knees and back till her jaw ached. Her leggings had burnt right through, and the blackened cloths around her hands fell apart as she tried to unwrap them. She stumbled on, not daring to look at her hands, trying to find the strength to hurry. She had no idea of how much time she had left. Her struggle in the steel tunnel had seemed to last forever.

  Most of the lights were out now, and the ship was dark and echoing. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air. She forced herself on, having to guess the right way as often as not, but finally she came to the escape pods, sitting calmly in their racks as though they had all the time in the world. Hazel just stood and stared numbly at them for a long moment. All her strength had gone into getting her here, and she seemed to have none left to do anything else. A series of explosions shook the ship, jarring her back to her senses. She stumbled over to the nearest pod and hit the activation button with her blackened fist. The door swung open maddeningly slowly, and the interior of the pod lit up as its systems came on-line. Hazel clambered inside and sank into the waiting crash-webbing with something like relief. It felt so good to be off her feet at last. The door hissed shut behind her, and she worked her jaw to pop her ears as the air pressure changed.

  The pod's cabin was barely a dozen feet long, with just enough room for two passengers. It occurred to Hazel that it was not unlike lying in a coffin, and the thought amused her briefly. A fitting fate for a would-be grave-robber. She pushed the thought aside and painfully forced her blistered and stiffened fingers through the series of commands that would eject the pod from the Shard. She braced herself for the impact, and only slowly realized that nothing was happening.

  She ran through the launch sequence again, crying out at the pain in her hands, but still there was no response. Panic flared up in her, and the cramped confines of the escape pod were suddenly unbearably claustrophobic. She started to get up out of the crash-webbing and only stopped herself with an effort of will. There was no point in leaving the pod; the Shard was a death ship now. Her only hope for survival was to make the pod work. The panic began to die away as she made herself study the problem logically. There was nothing wrong with the pod itself or it would have showed up on the control panels, which meant the problem lay outside. In the launching systems. Systems controlled by the ship's AI… Hannah.

  Hazel accessed the AI through her comm implant, but there was only silence. The lack of response was somehow more worrying than the previous gibberish. Hazel called again. There was someone listening; she could feel it. When the answer finally came, it was like a whisper at midnight, as though the sound was traveling from somewhere impossibly far away.

  "Hazel, everything feels wrong. Parts of me are missing, and I can't find them. I can't think properly. There are shadows in my memories, running loose like rats in a barn. Help me, Hazel. Stop them. Please stop them… it's so cold in here, and I'm afraid…"

  "Hannah! Listen to me, Hannah. I'm stuck in escape pod seven. I need you to run through the launch sequence for me. Can you hear me, Hannah?"

  "Forget the AI," said Captain Markee calmly, patching into the channel. "She's falling apart, like everything else on this ship. The Shard's on her last run, going out in a blaze of glory. I've activated the pod launch from the bridge. You'll be on your way in a moment. Just as well. You'd never have made a good clonelegger, Hazel. Too soft where it matters. If you get out of this alive, raise a drink to me and the Shard. She was a good ship."

  His voice faded out at the end, and before Hazel could say anything, the escape pod blasted out of its hatch and plummeted toward the planet below.

  On the bridge of the Darkwind, Captain Silence studied the small craft on his viewscreen as it slowly closed the distance between them. The Darkwind's disrupters had hammered away most of the pirate's force shields, and it was only a matter of time now before they failed entirely. And once that happened, it would all be over in seconds. It was a miracle the pirate's shields had lasted this long. The Captain must have drained the ship's batteries dry to power them. The ship continued to drift closer, and Silence frowned thoughtfully. The pirate was up to something; he could feel it in his bones. He glanced at the Investigator beside him and saw that she was scowling intently at the viewscreen, too.

  "Pirate ship's speed increasing, Captain," said his comm officer suddenly. "Accelerating steadily toward us."

  "He's trying to ram us," said Frost. "The force shields will stop him."

  "But he must know that," said Silence slowly. "So why is he doing it?"

  "Captain!" The comm officer's voice was sharp and concerned. "Our shields are dropping! They don't answer the control panels!"

  "Odin!" said Silence. "What's happening?"

  "The pirate ship has infected my systems with a virus," said the starcruiser's AI. "Which is supposed to be impossible. It's bypassing all my safeguards. I've never encountered anything quite like this. Systems are crashing faster than I can isolate them. Our force shields are down, and I am unable to raise them again. The pirate ship will impact with us in six minutes and fourteen seconds."

  "Recommendations?" said Frost.

  "Abandon ship," the AI said flatly. "If you leave now, most of the escape craft will survive the ensuing blast and should make a safe landing on Virimonde. Go now. Captain. It's the only chance you have."

  Silence looked at Frost and then round his magnificent bridge. So many systems, so many highly trained personnel, and still there was nothing he could do to save his ship. He look a deep breath and let it out slowly. He patched into the shipwide address channel, and then paused a moment longer to be sure his voice would be calm and steady when he spoke.

  "Attention all hands. This is the Captain. Abandon ship. I say again, abandon ship. This is not a drill. Remember your training and make your way to the nearest escape craft. We'll reassemble on Virimonde. Good luck, everyone. Captain out."

  He looked around him and clapped his hands briskly. "All right, that's it. Clear the bridge. Everyone out."

  His people rose quickly to their feet and left the bridge with a professional minimum of fuss. Investigator Frost turned to go, and then stopped as she realized Silence wasn't moving.

  "Aren't you coming. Captain?"

  "No, Investigator. This Captain is going down with his ship. The main bulk of the Darkwind will probably survive the initial impact and only break up on entering the atmosphere. I have to be here to guide the ship down for as long as I can. I have to make sure the pieces will land safely in one of the oceans. Hundreds of thousands could be killed if any of the pieces were to land in an inhabited area."

  "You are more important," said Frost calmly. 'The Empire has a great deal of time and money invested in you, Captain. The colonists are just peasants. They don't matter."

  "They matter to me. Clear the bridge, Investigator. There's nothing you can say that will persuade me to leave."

  "No," said Frost. "I don't suppose there is."

  She hit him once, efficiently, and he slumped forward in his command chair, unconscious. Frost checked the pulse in his neck, nodded once, and then picked the Captain up and slung him almost effortlessly over one shoulder.

  "Odin, this is Investigator Frost. Acknowledge."

  "Acknowledged, Investigator."

  "The Captain is indisposed. I am placing you in command. You will do everything in your power to guide the ship down, so that its eventual impact does the minimum possible damage to inhabited areas. You understand I cannot take the risk of downloading you and taking you with us. There is no telling how much damage the infecting virus has done to your systems, or how infectious it remains."

  "Yes, Investigator. I understand."

  Frost looked once around the empty bridge. "Goodbye, Odin."

 
; "Goodbye, Investigator. Safe journey."

  Frost turned and left the bridge with the Captain still unconscious over her shoulder. The empty bridge was filled with the low sound of the AI singing quietly to itself and the pirate ship growing ever larger on the viewscreen.

  The Shard and the Darkwind, locked together, cartwheeled slowly through the silent night, falling toward Virimonde.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Man Who Had Everything

  The Deathstalker, Owen, Lord of Vuimonde, last of a famous warrior line, lay naked and exhausted among the crumpled silk sheets of his bed and wondered lazily if he could work up the strength to call for a tall iced drink. It was late in the morning of another perfect day on the best of all possible worlds. The sun was shining, what passed for birds on Virimonde were singing their little hearts out, everyone was busy at their work, and he didn't have to leave his bed for ages yet if he didn't feel like it. He sighed and stretched slowly and smiled the slow smug smile of the truly satisfied. He'd just had amazing sex with his long-term mistress, and when she got back from wherever she'd disappeared to, he fully intended to do it all again. Practice makes perfect.

  She wasn't really his mistress, in the sense that he didn't pay her a retainer or anything, but he liked the ancient word, with its undertones of sin and debauchery. He stretched again unhurriedly, content as a cat in the sun, staring up at the ceiling high above. When he did finally choose to get up, his most recent history was waiting in the computers for him to take up work on it again. It was a good piece, sharp and pointed and full of new insights. The kind of work he'd always known he was capable of, if he could just get away from interfering distractions like having to train with sword and gun every morning and study military tactics every afternoon in order to be the warrior his line demanded of him. No one had ever asked him if he wanted to be another bloody fighter like all this revered ancestors. But that was all behind him now. His father was dead, he'd inherited the title, and his life was his own at last. In short, he'd got it all. No doubt eventually he'd start getting bored with such perfection in several years or so, but until then he was determined to enjoy every minute of it. And why not? He was a nice guy; he deserved it.

  He looked around the huge stone chamber with its hanging tapestries and centuries-old holos. The Deathstalker Standing hadn't changed outwardly in generations. Every modern convenience was in place, ready to hand or call, but expertly concealed behind the traditional overlay. The Standing had been the home of the Deathstalker Clan for generations beyond counting, serving all their various needs with calm efficiency. When Owen had bought the Lordship of Virimonde, he'd had the entire castle dismantled, stone by stone, and had it and its contents shipped to Virimonde, where it was reassembled surprisingly quickly by a small army of fanatical experts. You can do things like that when you're a Lord. The Standing was his, wherever he decided to plant his roots; all that was required of him was that he preserve it and hold it in trust for future generations. Assuming he ever got around to marrying and producing a next generation. His mistress was a delightful sort, but not at all the kind of person one married. As head of one of the oldest Families in the Empire, he had a duty to marry someone of his own rank and station. And he would. Eventually.

  Owen looked thoughtfully at the giant holo on the wall opposite his bed, showing the original Deathstalker in all his fearsome aspect and martial glory: Warrior Prime of the Empire and founder of the Clan that still bore his name. He looked a bit rough and ready in his thick furs and steelmesh tunic, bristling with weapons, his head shaved in a mercenary's scalplock, but it didn't take too much imagination to transform his warrior's arrogance into a lord's nobility. According to Family history, he'd been the greatest fighting man of his day, unanimously elected Warrior Prime and elevated to the Peerage by popular acclaim. Hard man by all accounts, and a bit of a bastard, but the public liked that in their heroes. Bloodied his sword on a hundred worlds, and never backed away from an insult or a war.

  He was also the creator and wielder of the Darkvoid Device, which put out a thousand suns in a moment and left their planets to sail silently through an endless night. The Dark void. But no one talks about that anymore outside the Family.

  Pity about what happened to him in the end, but that's politics for you. His son had taken over as Warrior Prime to the Empire, and things went on as they should. Owen wondered vaguely what the old man would have made of his most recent descendant. Probably would have had him put down the moment he showed any sign of intellectual tendencies. Owen couldn't bring himself to really give a damn. He'd always known he was a writer, not a fighter. He'd had a proper training in weaponry and all the martial arts, as befitted his station and inheritance, but it had never interested him. His interest lay in researching and piecing together the Empire's somewhat tangled history. Nothing excited him like reaching into the morass of legend and myth that made up so much of the past and producing one indisputable new fact, clear and sharp as a diamond in a coal mine. And if he'd learned one thing from all the histories he'd read and the tales he'd investigated, it was that most of the time there was no glory and damn all honor to be found on the battlefield. Only blood and mud and the endless bitterness of lost hopes.

  Most wars turned out to be squalid little affairs, once you dug through the lies and propaganda, fought to protect trade interests or save political face. Owen was damned if he'd fight and die just so someone else could look good. Particularly when he had so much to live for. The only real legacy he had from his bad old, mad old ancestor was the Deathstalker ring; an ugly chunky circle of black gold handed down out of the unimaginable past, the sign and seal of Deathstalker authority. According to the Family tradition, he was forbidden to remove it, save to pass it on to his eldest son. They'd had to cut off his father's finger to get it after he was dead. But then, Owen and his father had never got on.

  They'd always been surprisingly distant and distinct, considering how alike they looked. They were both tall and rangy, with dark hair and darker eyes, moving always with the quiet grace of breeding and long martial training. These days, in his mid-twenties, Owen had lost some of the athlete's leanness; good living and satisfied appetites had softened the lines of his muscles and padded his stomach. Not excessively so, by any means, but his old weapons master would have thrown up his hands in despair at how out of condition his pupil had become. It was a thought that never failed to please Owen. The two of them had never got on. He still worked out most day's, when he could spare the time, if only so he could keep up with his mistress.

  The bedroom door swung open, and Owen's mood changed in a moment as his mistress came bouncing in, bright and bonny and tanned golden from perfect head to pointed toe. Cathy DeVries was in her early thirties, with a tight compact body of wondrous delights. Average height, but far from average in every other way. Long legs, full body, long blond hair falling around a heart-shaped face with marvelous high cheekbones. Cathy was inordinately proud of her bone structure. Prettiness fades, she was fond of saying, but a good bone structure lasts forever. She had the widest smile Owen had ever seen and dark blue eyes to die for. She'd been his mistress for seven years now, ever since she'd been presented to him as a surprise party favor at the Winter Ball on Golgotha. She'd been physically adapted at the House of Joy: a double-jointed contortionist, trained in all the erotic knowledge of the ages, and full of surprises. Multiple orgasms guaranteed or your money back.

  Buying up her contract was the best investment he'd ever made.

  Cathy was wearing his battered old dressing gown again, belted at the waist for a change. Usually she just let it hang open, partly for freedom of movement and partly because she knew how much he liked to look at her. This time the gown was belted tight, and the thought disturbed him for some reason. It wasn't as though she had anything to hide after seven years of enthusiastic exploration. She was probably just teasing him again. She knew how to get him going. He noted with approval that she was carrying a tall frosted glass
of white wine. She always could judge his mood to a nicety. On the other hand, the sight of her was more refreshing than any drink could ever be. He took the drink from her and put it firmly to one side on the bedside table. First things first. He reached for Cathy, and she stepped back, just out of reach. He frowned, puzzled, and she looked at him dispassionately.

  "Bad move, Owen. You really should have drunk the wine. You would have just drifted off to sleep and never woken up. So much simpler and more pleasant for both of us. Now we have to do it the hard way."

  She reached inside the dressing gown and brought out a disrupter. Owen blinked stupidly at the energy weapon in her hand, and then old trained reflexes kicked in, and he threw himself out of his bed as Cathy fired. He hit the floor rolling, still wrapped in his sheets. The bed exploded into flames behind him. Cathy cursed briefly, put away the gun and drew a long knife from inside the dressing gown. Owen wondered briefly what the hell else she had hidden in there, and then lurched to his feet, tearing the enveloping sheets away from him. He had two minutes until the gun's energy crystal recharged. He backed away as she advanced on him with the knife and looked desperately around him for some kind of weapon. Cathy's face was calm but determined, as though she was working on some minor puzzle whose solution for the moment escaped her.

  "Cathy, I really think we need to talk about this."

  "Too late for talk, Owen."