Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

planet Technos III, and Owen and Hazel ended up with Young Jack on their team, despite their loud objections. Young Jack took it all with a good-natured smile, which made Owen trust him even less. Never trust a man who
    smiles too much, his father had always said. It's not natural, not in this day and age. Hazel was even less impressed with the man than Owen, if that was possible, and had told Young Jack to his face that he was a liar and impostor.
    He just kept on smiling, and said he hoped he'd have the chance to prove himself to her. Hazel told him that if he laid one finger on her, she'd make him eat the finger. Young Jack chuckled good-naturedly, and said she was very pretty when she was angry, and Owen had to hold Hazel down until the red mist had gone from her eyes.
    The other new arrival was the esper known as Jenny Psycho. She had forced her way onto the Mistworld team, on the grounds that a planet largely populated by runaway espers would want to meet the last person to manifest the uber-esper Mater Mundi, Our Mother Of All Souls, who had single-handedly made the great esper escape from Wormboy Hell possible. Jenny didn't look like much, at first glance. She was short and blond, with a pale ghostly face dominated by sharp blue eyes. She had a wide mouth, and an unsettling smile that showed more teeth than humor. Her voice was harsh and unattractive, her throat damaged by constant screaming in the dark cells of Silo Nine.
    Before the underground sent her into Wormboy Hell as their undercover agent, she'd been just another esper; but since the Mater Mundi touched her, Jenny Psycho had become a major esper power overnight. Her presence all but crackled on the air around her, an almost tangible effect on any company. Where once she'd been nothing but a minor telepath, now every esper ability was hers to call upon, something which was supposed to be impossible, though no one had even been stupid enough to say that to Jenny Psycho. Most people had enough sense not to get that close to her anyway.

    She respected Owen and Hazel for the power they'd brought to the rebellion, but since her personality could change from the relatively sane Jenny to the actually disturbing Psycho in mid-sentence, they'd found it hard to get to know her. They tried to make allowances. She had, after all, volunteered to be sent into Silo Nine, and Wormboy Hell was enough to break anyone. It helped that she didn't trust Young Jack either. Possibly because she didn't like the competition for attention.
    She paused for a moment in the doorway, to make sure everyone was looking at her, then flounced across the room to the only remaining empty chair and sank into it as if it were a throne. Young Jack Random stayed by the door, falling naturally into an heroic pose. Jenny ignored him magnificently. "How much longer till we get to Mistworld?" she said icily.
    "Now don't you start," said Owen. "Even with the new drive, it still takes time to get from one side of the Empire to the other."
    "Actually, we've been in orbit around Mistworld for almost twenty minutes,"
    Ozymandius murmured in Owen's ear.
    "What?" said Owen, subvocalizing furiously. "Why didn't the ship's AI tell me?"
    "You didn't tell it to. It is, after all, nowhere near as complex as I."
    "Well, why didn't you tell me we'd arrived?"
    "Who, me? I'm dead, remember? Far be it from me to put myself in where I'm not wanted."
    Owen fought down a need to sigh heavily and looked at his fellow team members.
    "Apparently we are currently in orbit over our destination. So far, no one is shooting at us. Hazel, you know these people better than the rest of us. Patch into the comm system and find out what exorbitant price they're going to charge us for landing this time."

    She grunted unenthusiastically and got up out of her chair. It took her a while, and a certain amount of effort, because of the weight of all the guns she'd loaded herself down with. She made her way unhurriedly over to the comm panels and put in a call to Mistport Security. There was only one city and one starport on Mistworld, and that was Mistport. A wild and woolly place, and very definitely not somewhere you went without an invitation. As the Empire had found out, to its cost. As Hazel waited more or less patiently for someone to answer her, Owen looked around him, then stirred uncomfortably in his chair as he discovered that Jenny Psycho was studying him again. Her esp made her somewhat aware of the great changes that