Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

as an outlaw, and wade through blood and slaughter in the streets of Golgotha, just to see power handed over to such as you! I don’t know how you managed to escape the war trials, Gutman, but you won’t escape me. Now, come down off that seat or I’ll come up and get you.” “You can’t touch me. I
    have the protection of Parliament. The people you yourself helped place in power. Have you no faith in your own creation?” “Not when they screw up this badly.”
    “So you place yourself above their authority? Just like the aristocrats you threw down because you said they abused their power. Can anyone spot the irony here? You’re not a hero anymore, Deathstalker, making up your own rules as you go along. You’re just another citizen of the Empire, subject to the authority of the people, as expressed through Parliament.”
    “To hell with that! I never needed a Parliament to tell me what was right and wrong! Now, get down here or I’ll kill you where you sit!” “You defy Parliament’s will!”
    “To hell with them! I’ll tear down this whole House around your ears if that’s what it takes!”
    Armed guards came running from all sides as the MPs broke into an excited babble. With anyone else, what they’d heard might just have been empty threats, but this was Owen Deathstalker. He might just do it. Gutman gripped the arms of his chair tightly, but kept his face calm. He’d manipulated the Deathstalker into losing his temper and undermining his heroic image. Now all he had to do was live through it.
    “Typical Deathstalker threat,” he said steadily, making sure his voice was heard over the rising hubbub.
    “To hell with how many die as long as he gets his way. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. It was after all his ancestor, the first Deathstalker, who activated the Darkvoid Device and murdered untold billions of innocents.”
    Hazel clung grimly to Owen’s arm so he couldn’t draw his disrupter. The surrounding guards looked on anxiously. Hazel grabbed Owen by the chin with one hand and forced his face around to meet hers.
    “Don’t, Owen. You’d have to kill a lot of innocent men before you got to Gutman.”
    Owen jerked his face out of her hand and glared at her, breathing hard. “I thought you at least would understand.”
    “I do, Owen, I do. But this isn’t the time or the place.” It had gone very quiet in the House. Everyone was waiting to see what the Deathstalker would do. The guards were careful to do nothing that might provoke him into action. Owen looked slowly about him and then some of the anger went out of him, and he let his hand drop away from the disrupter at his side. There was the sound of a great many people releasing held breaths. Owen nodded to Hazel.
    “What are things coming to, when you have to lecture me on restraint? But you’re right; there’ll be a better time.”
    He turned his back on Gutman and strode off to join the watching crowd in the appointed area. Hazel gave Gutman a hard look and then hurried after Owen, just in case. Not far away, Jack Random and Ruby Journey were applauding. A great many others looked as though they would have liked to. The guards lowered their weapons, picked up their two fallen fellows, and retreated as fast as honor would allow. Toby Shreck grinned from ear to ear, confident that Flynn had got it all on tape.
    Elias Gutman waited a moment to be sure his voice was steady, and then opened the session’s proceedings with an emotional speech composed entirely of stirring sound bites. Everyone present applauded the speech for being short, and then Parliament finally got down to business. First on the agenda was a report from the cyberats currently investigating Golgotha’s Computer Matrix for signs of infiltration by the rogue AIs of Shub.
    A viewscreen appeared before the assembled Parliament and audience, floating in midair. Vivid colors flashed across the screen, and then resolved into the head and shoulders of whoever was acting as spokesperson for the cyberats today. They tended to be rather relaxed about such matters, having little concern for the demands of the world outside their precious computers. The cyberats lived for the time they spent immersed in cyberspace, and never appeared in public if they could help it. Anyone who’d ever seen one knew why immediately. They had enough tech implants, add-ons, and cutting-edge options to technically qualify as cyborgs, and their personal habits occasionally bordered