Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

see whether Evangeline was following him.
    All across the planet of Golgotha, in towns and cities and starports, the rebels moved unstoppably forward, driving back the Imperial forces on all fronts. Their one trump card, the huge war machines, now stood dead and lifeless, empty metal shells with nothing to guide them. The Imperial troops looked defeat in the face, and reacted in the only way they knew how. They broke out the biggest weapons they had, and opened fire on everyone who wasn't them. They cut down rebels and civilians alike, and flooded the streets with blood. They took crowds of women and children hostage, used them as human shields, and threatened to execute them in batches of ten if the rebels didn't back off. They blew up important installations and power plants and hospitals rather than let the rebels take them. They destroyed whole towns and their populations in order to save them. Such widespread savagery and slaughter had been expected, and theoretically allowed for, but in practice the sheer coldbloodedness of it
    shocked the rebels to their souls, even after all they'd seen on Virimonde. All over the world the rebel advances slowed and stopped, confronted by an evil too great for their simple tactics. The rebels were willing to give their own lives for victory, but faced with the responsibility for mass slaughter of civilians, they hesitated, and were lost. The rebellion faltered, and suddenly everything seemed in the balance again.
    And that was when the Mater Mundi manifested again, all across the planet. Our Mother of All Souls, the uber-esper, slammed into every esper's mind simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of espers suddenly transformed and transfigured into a whole new order of being. Linked into one great massmind, they acted as one, the psistorms flashed through towns and cities all over Golgotha, sweeping away the Imperial troops while not touching the rebels or civilians. Polters and pyros destroyed Imperial buildings and refuges, torched barracks and tore down barricades, unstoppable avatars of destruction.
    Telepathic storms swept through the troops, jumping from mind to mind, washing away sanity and memories and leaving nothing behind. In other places, esper-driven nightmares ran riot through helpless minds, and hardened soldiers tore out their own eyes rather than see what they were being shown. Other troops gunned down their fellows, then turned their guns on themselves.
    And as quickly as that the tide turned again, and resistance to the rebel forces was swept away. Mater Mundi looked upon her work and saw it to be good, and withdrew herself from the thousands of esper minds. The rebel forces mopped up the mess she'd left behind and took control of the towns and cities, whose populations praised them as saviors. The war on the surface was over.
    But the Mater Mundi wasn't finished yet. Manifesting through an old friend, Jenny Psycho, the Mater Mundi reached out and snagged two more useful souls, and
    teleported all three of them to where they could do the most good. They disappeared silently, air rushing in to fill the space where they'd been, and in the general chaos no one even noticed they'd gone. Satisfied that she'd done all that was necessary, the Mater Mundi shut herself down until she might be needed again.
    In Lionstone's Court, Hell had taken root and bloomed like a dark and poisonous flower. There were flames everywhere, their golden and scarlet light sometimes all the illumination there was against the lowering dark. The air was thick with the stench of sulfur, spilled blood, and cooked human flesh. Captured rebels had been impaled on rough wooden stakes or hung on traceries of metal thorns that slowly pulled them apart. Corpses of dead advisors hung from chains. Ravens ate their eyes and tore at their faces, and spoke shrilly in human voices. It had become dangerous to fail the Empress in anything now. Bloodred angels with burning wings stood in ranks behind the Iron Throne, bearing monofilament swords. Dishonorable weapons, but Lionstone was past caring about such niceties.
    Captain Silence, Investigator Frost, and Security Officer Stelmach made their way cautiously through the crimson-tinged mists of Hell, carefully skirting the yellow sulfur fogs that belched up out of the glowing ash pits. They stuck close together, tried not to look around too much, and headed for Lionstone's spotlit Throne by the most direct route. Small bones crunched under their boots