Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

to help. Raw fury blazed up inside Random, and he punched his opponent in the chest with all his strength. His bare fist hammered through the battle armor and plunged on into the man's chest. The Wolfe soldier screamed horribly as Random's fist closed around his heart and
    tore it out. Random held the still beating heart up in his hand, blood running down his arm as he laughed victoriously.
    For a moment the battle seemed to stop, everyone frozen where they were, and then it began again, only this time the rebels were forcing the soldiers back.
    Random and Ruby pressed forward and could not be stopped, and the Rejects took new heart from their example. More of the armored men fell, screaming. Some turned to flee, but there wasn't room in the packed space, and they just got in the way of their fellows. Specter Alice crowed victoriously as she straddled the shoulders of a man in armor, leaning forward over him, her bloody dagger stabbing again and again through the eyeholes of his helmet.
    In the end, not one Wolfe soldier got away. Their broken armored bodies littered the floor, stretching away down the tunnel. There were rebel dead, too, but not nearly so many. It seemed there was blood everywhere, running down the walls and pooled on the floor. Random and Ruby grinned at each other, and the Rejects crowded around them to congratulate them and slap them on the back and shoulder.
    Random scrubbed happily at the blood on his hand and arm with a cloth, and had a nod and a smile for everyone, until his eyes met Storm's. His old friend had broken a little apart from the others. There was blood on his sword and his clothes, but little of it seemed to be his. He was breathing hard, and his sword trembled in his hand. He looked at Random as though he was a stranger. Random moved over to join him, but stopped some way short, held back by the coldness in Storm's eyes.
    "Who are you?" said Storm. "The Jack Random I remember couldn't do things like that. Nothing human could."
    "I've… been through changes," said Random. "I'm more than I was. But I'm still
    me."
    "No you're not," said Storm. "I don't know who you are anymore."
    He turned away and walked off down the tunnel by himself. Random let him go. If only because there was a certain amount of truth in what his old friend had said. He looked up to see Specter Alice staring at him. He shrugged, and she shrugged back and went after Storm. Ruby Journey had meanwhile cleared a space around her with snarls and curses, and was methodically cleaning her sword with what had once been a fine silk handkerchief. Ruby wasn't much for congratulations or camaraderie. She wouldn't feel like talking with him now, either. Random shrugged again. He'd just done what he had to, as he had so many times before.
    But he could still feel the heart beating out the last of its life in his hand while he laughed. That wasn't like him. Not like him at all.
    He pushed the thought aside as another occurred to him. He couldn't help wondering if the Rejects had deliberately chosen a path that would intercept armored Wolfe tunnel rats, just to see what the legendary Jack Random and his friends were capable of when not part of a Reject army. It was the kind of thing he would have done once. But though he was also impressed with the way the Rejects had handled themselves, ready to risk death just to test him, he was a little disturbed that they hadn't even tried to take any prisoners. There came a time when hatred just got in the way of winning a war. In the end you won more victories by accepting the other side's surrender than by wiping them out to the last man. Or did the hatreds run too deep, here on Technos III?
    The Church troops, known collectively as the Faithful, were training together in the great open area between the factory complex and the first trench, and Toby Shreck and Flynn were there to cover it all. Absolutely no one was glad to see
    them there, but Toby and Flynn were used to that by now. Officially, the soldiers of the Church of Christ the Warrior and the hardened Wolfe mercenaries were supposed to be one integrated fighting force by now, but both sides had centuries of tradition, not to mention white-hot enmity, behind them.
    Consequently, what had been intended as an orchestrated set piece of hard drill and weapons training was rapidly deteriorating into a complete mess, as the Faithful and the mercs strode to outdo each other in sheer viciousness, if not skill.
    Cardinal Kassar was