Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

four people to operate it, working simultaneously. Security again.”
    Owen and Hazel checked the four hand controls, simple wheels set at the four corners of the slab, but no matter how hard they stretched, their arms didn’t even come close to reaching more than one wheel at a time. It had to be four people. Hazel kicked the seal disgustedly, leaving a small dent in the metal.
    “Stupid bloody thing. I didn’t come all this way just to be stopped by a bloody lump of steel. Stand back, I’m blasting the bastard thing.” “You’d need a disrupter cannon to get through something this big,”
    said Owen.
    “And then there’s the alarms—“
    “I am getting really tired of hearing about the alarms. I am not wading all the way back through the sewers, Owen. Either you come up with something, or I am blasting the seal and risking it.”
    “All right, I may have an idea,” said Owen. “We got past the fan by fine-tuning my power. How about trying the same thing with yours?” Hazel looked at him. “Run that past me again. How could my power help us here?”
    “Well, you can summon an army of alternate selves to back you up in battle. Maybe if you concentrated hard enough, you could call up just two, and have them stick around long enough to work the other controls.” “Damn,” said Hazel. “That is bloody brilliant! I take back everything I said about you. I’m not sure it’s practical, but it’s certainly worth a try.” She stood frowning at the floor for a long time, trying to concentrate. Like Owen, her power usually emerged only under great stress. In the heat of battle, when she needed her other selves to be there, they just were. Hazel had no idea why some alternates turned up rather than others, or even what they really were. The best guess seemed to be that they were other versions of herself from different time tracks, people she might have been if history had gone differently, but she had no proof for that. None of them had ever stuck around long enough to answer questions. It was equally possible that all the other Hazels were just figments of her imagination, somehow given life and substance by her Maze power. It made just as much sense.
    The more she thought about it, trying to recreate how she’d felt during those past battles, the more it seemed to her that there was a direction she could reach in, a direction as real as any other, but not limited to the world she lived in. She reached out, and myriad ghosts with her face seemed to sense her presence and turn their heads in her direction. She concentrated on her need for just two people, and two hands reached out to take hers. There was a sudden puff of displaced air in the tunnel, and suddenly two new women were standing in the tunnel before her, hacking and coughing in the green-tinted air.
    Hazel shot a triumphant glance at Owen, and then realized his jaw had dropped down almost to his knees. Hazel frowned and turned back to look at the two other selves she’d summoned.
    The woman on the left had skin so black she looked like a living shadow, and her hair hung in beaded shoulder-length dreadlocks. She wore bright silver body armor, chased and scored with magnificent runes, along with gold accessories like knee pads, elbow guards, and knuckle dusters. She had a gun on each hip, and was holding a short-handled ax. Tall and almost unbearably voluptuous, she looked every inch a proud, capable warrior woman. And yet there was something in her stance, in her face, and in her eyes and mouth that was undeniably Hazel d’Ark.
    The woman on the right had dead-white skin, and in the green light looked very much like a corpse that had risen from the embalming table when the process was only half finished.
    She was dressed in scraps and rags of leather, held together by brightly polished lengths of steel chain.
    She had rings in her ears and nose, and other less comfortable places, and there were metal studs, needles, and other piercings scattered practically everywhere else on her body. She was whipcord lean, every muscle clearly defined, and her head was shaved bald to better show off the rows of steel studs implanted in neat rows in her skull. She wore a long sword on one hip and an unfamiliar make of gun on the other. Both looked like they’d seen a lot of use. And yet, once again, the face and eyes were clearly that of Hazel d’Ark.
    Two ghosts, in black and white, shades of people Hazel might have been if things had gone very