Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

pressure upon herself as one by one the other espers collapsed and died around her. Very soon the strain was almost unbearable. For all her strength, Jenny Psycho was no match for the many minds that made up Legion. If she and everyone else in the barroom were to survive, she was going to have to be more than just Jenny Psycho.
    And so she reached inside herself, to that brightly shining place once touched by the Mater Mundi in the dark cells of Silo Nine. She called out to the uber-esper, the Mater Mundi, Our Mother Of All Souls, to come and manifest through her again, and pull all the espers in Mistport together into one great gestalt that would drive Legion and the Empire from Mistworld. She called, and no one answered. Jenny screamed then, a bitter howl of outrage and betrayal and despair that for a moment even drowned out Legion's endless scream. For as far as she could reach with her mind, there was no trace of the Mater Mundi, only the bright sparks of Mistport's espers blinking out one by one, and that awful thing that was Legion, slowly turning its full attention upon her. The Mater Mundi had abandoned her.
    Jenny Psycho held together through sheer willpower. She had to. So many people were depending on her. Her brief touch by the Mater Mundi had made her one of
    the strongest espers the Empire had ever seen, but even so it was all she could do to hold off the many-in-one that was Legion. The pain was almost unbearable, but she wouldn't give up. If the Council were to die, resistance in Mistport would quickly fall apart, and the Empire would win. Jenny turned inward, cutting off all contact with the outside world, focusing all her will and concentration on maintaining the psionic shield. She stopped hearing the screams of people dying in the streets around the Blackthorn Inn, as the disrupter beams stabbed viciously down, killing everything that moved, spreading fire and destruction.
    She couldn't afford to be distracted. The psionic shield was her whole world now.
    She knew the strain was killing her, and didn't care. After enduring the horrors and agonies of Silo Nine, she'd sworn to die rather than be taken captive again.
    Blood leaked steadily from her nose and ears, and sprayed from her mouth with every harsh breath. Some of the pain began to die away as parts of her mind began to shut down, bit by bit. She didn't know it, but her face looked like a grinning, death's-head mask. And still she fought on, refusing to give in, refusing to be beaten, and slowly she began to gain a new sense of her opponent Legion, of who and what it was. Of what it had been made from. Brains from people she might have known and Wormboy's worms. And Legion looked on her and knew who she was. The worms remembered her and what she'd done before. They were scared of her. Jenny Psycho laughed inside her head, and it was a terrible, unforgiving sound.
    The invading forces pressed forward on all fronts, though more slowly on some than others. It was as though every man, woman, and child who could hold a weapon was out in the streets of Mistport, defending barricades and blocking crossroads, sniping from windows and hidden alleyways, making the troopers fight
    for every inch and pay for every victory in blood and death. Retreating defenders blew up and collapsed buildings as they fell back, to block off streets and slow the Empire's advance. The rebels' projectile weapons confused and scattered troops only used to dealing with the predictability and long pauses of disrupter fire until they learned to advance behind massed force shields, and the projectile guns were no use against them.
    There were no espers operating now, in the sky or on the streets. Legion had proved too much for all but the strongest, and most of those were dead now. The defenders fell back, street by street, trying to follow Mistport's ages-old plans for last-ditch defense, but the plans hadn't been updated in years.
    Important routes had been blocked by street markets and new buildings, and some streets didn't exist anymore, save on the oldest maps. The defenders did the best they could, falling back only when there was no other option, retreating slowly toward the vulnerable heart of Mistport.
    The wounded and refugees traveled through the city on barges on the River Autumn. It was quicker and safer than trusting to the streets. The coal-fired barges chugged up and down the freezing river, their steel prows breaking through the newly forming ice on the surface