Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

absence of the Cardinal and his Jesuit enforcers. After all, they had nothing to do but watch a few sensors while they waited for the Cardinal's troops to make short work of a few native discontents. Easy work. Everyone knew there wasn't a rebel born who could stand against trained troops of the Faithful. So a soft duty for once, and the crew took advantage of it. Which was why when the giant golden Hadenman ship dropped suddenly out of hyperspace just above them, the whole crew took one look and all but shit themselves. The huge ship hung above them, dwarfing the Church vessel like a minnow next to a killer
    shark. The Church crew snapped to attention at their posts, their hands moving desperately over their control panels. Shields slammed into place as guns powered up, and even those whose piety wasn't all it might have been found a sudden need to send up prayers of the most fervent kind.
    The Hadenman ship opened fire, and the Divine Breath shuddered as disrupter cannon hammered against their shields. The Church ship fired back as fast as it could get its guns to bear, but the golden ship was impossibly fast for its size, and the crew of the Divine Breath knew they were hopelessly outclassed.
    They fought on anyway, not through their faith as much as because there was nothing else they could do. They couldn't drop into hyperspace without lowering their shields first, and the moment they did that the Hadenman ship would blow them apart.
    The Captain watched his shields go down one by one and called for more power, though he already knew he was using everything the ship's straining engines could produce. If he'd only had one of the new stardrives being produced on the planet below, he might have stood a better chance, and the irony was not lost on him. And then, as he searched frantically for something—anything—to do to hold off the inevitable, the great golden ship suddenly disappeared back into hyperspace, gone between one moment and the next.
    The Captain blinked a few times, clutched at the crucifix on his uniform collar, and muttered a few Hail Marys, and then sank back in his command chair, cold sweat slowly evaporating on his forehead. His ship had survived, but he was damned if he knew why. When he finally got his strength back he canceled Red Alert, ordered full damage reports, and a complete sensor sweep of the surrounding space, just in case. He then wondered what the hell he was going to say to the Cardinal down below. He'd have to be told, even though he'd probably
    shout a lot. The Captain frowned, trying hard to come up with some viable-sounding excuse that wouldn't get him court-martialed or excommunicated.
    There was no getting away from the fact that he and his crew had been caught with their pants around their ankles, but damn it, it had been a Hadenman ship!
    There weren't many who'd seen one of those in action and lived to tell of it.
    The Captain and his crew worked hard on their various excuses and explanations, which was at least partly why they never noticed the heavily shielded escape pod that the Hadenman ship had dropped just before it disappeared.
    The pod hurtled down through the buffeting clouds and howling winds, battered this way and that by the storm's fury, but still somehow holding to its planned descent. Inside the pod, Jack Random the professional rebel, Ruby Journey the ex-bounty hunter, and Alexander Storm the retired hero, clung desperately to their crash webbing and waited for the long drop into hell to end. The pod's outer hull groaned and squealed from the pressures it endured, and the sensors blinked out one by one till they were practically flying blind. The webbing cushioned and absorbed most of the shocks the pod encountered as it fell on and on into Technos III's turbulent atmosphere, but the three rebels were still flung this way and that in the webbings' restricted arcs.
    Storm gritted his teeth and tried hard to hang on to his last meal. Random ignored it all, concentrating on what he was going to do when he finally landed.
    It was his first time back in the business of armed rebellion, and while he was quite definitely looking forward to it, he couldn't help but worry. It had been a long time, and he wasn't all the man he used to be. Either way, it wouldn't stop him giving this mission his all. And if in the end everything went to hell in a handcart, what better way for a professional rebel to die than with gun and
    sword in his hand, and a pile of the enemy