Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

outrage. Disrupter bolts shot past Finlay. He grabbed the slab of explosive from his belt, slapped it against the deck of the sled so it would stick, and activated the timer built into it for a twenty-second fuse. Then he turned the Wolfe sled around and sent it back toward the approaching craft. Fifteen. He timed his moment carefully, and then jumped off. Ten. He hit the floor hard and rolled behind a heavy desk. Five. The sled slammed into the midst of the Wolfes and blew apart in a gush of flames. The other sleds exploded as their drives ruptured, and for a long moment the office was full of jagged metal shrapnel raining down, interspersed with wet, soft parts of what had once been their crew. A fireball blazed briefly in the confined space, but quickly ran out of air and collapsed.
    Finlay huddled in a ball beneath his sheltering desk, hands pressed tightly to
    his ears against the overpowering roar of the explosion. He slowly lowered his hands as he realized a silence had fallen, uncurled and cautiously raised his head to look about him. Fires had broken out all across the office, with desks burning fiercely here and there like so many warning beacons. Dead and injured lay to every side, some of them burning quietly. Finlay didn't spare them more than a glance. He didn't know them. Adrienne was all that mattered now. He saw a red light flashing over a door and wondered why the alarms weren't sounding. He slowly realized from the utter silence around him that they probably were, but he couldn't hear them. The blast had temporarily deafened him. At least, he hoped it was only temporary. He didn't need another problem.
    He rose painfully to his feet and stumbled toward his own sled, still hovering where he'd left it. Burning fragments sputtered on the deck around Adrienne, but she seemed unhurt. Finlay brushed the fragments off the deck with a sweep of his arm and climbed aboard. It was growing uncomfortably hot in the office as the fires spread, and his bare skin was beginning to smart from the heat. The office should have invested in sprinklers. For a moment that struck Finlay as wildly funny, and he giggled helplessly before pulling himself together. He looked down at Adrienne. The deck was slippery with her blood where it hadn't burnt, and her hands were wet and crimson where they tried to hold her guts together. Her face was worryingly colorless, but she was still breathing shallowly. Finlay eased the sled forward and out through the break in the window, and headed for Tower Shreck.
    Evangeline was getting ready for bed, even though it wasn't late. Daddy was coming over for one of his little visits. He'd contacted her just a few minutes before. He never gave her much warning, so she wouldn't have time to think up excuses, but he liked her to wait a little before he arrived, so that she could
    think about what was coming. So she sat in her long white nightdress before her dressing table mirror, listlessly brushing her hair and thinking about killing herself. She knew she wouldn't. She had so much to live for, apart from Daddy, and it would hurt Finlay so very much. The mood would pass, as it had so many times before, but for a moment it was comforting to think of ending it all and not having to worry anymore. She wouldn't have to worry about being revealed as a clone, or a member of the underground, or seeing Finlay die in the Arena, or suffering through another of Daddy's little visits ever again, and that would feel so good, so good…
    She sighed and put down her hairbrush and looked at it for a moment as though it was some foreign object, unknown to her. How could she be brushing her hair, such an ordinary, everyday thing, when her life was such a nightmare? Apart from Finlay, of course. His love was all that held her together now, when even the fires of her passion for the underground sometimes ran cold. He gave her the strength to go on, even in the face of Daddy and his clammy-handed love.
    He didn't come to her every night. Sometimes a whole week could go by without his honoring her with his presence. Gregor Shreck, smiling, sweating, lying beside her in her bed, talking smugly, calling her by her mother's name. She had never told Finlay, never even hinted at it. He must never know. At best he would have challenged Gregor to a duel and killed him, and then Finlay's secret identity and her secret status as a clone would both be revealed. At worst, he might not look at her in the same way again, once he