Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

now, after all these hundreds of years, Humanity was reaping what it had sown, and there was nowhere and no one they could turn to for help. The Empire's sundered worlds were under attack from all sides at once, with what remained of their armies up against forces almost too large for human minds to grasp. The nightmare steel vessels of Shub. The huge golden ships of the Hadenmen. The awful dark presence of the Recreated. Humanity had its back to the wall, and everyone could see the vultures gathering.
    The Recreated descended implacably on the homeworld Golgotha from one direction, while the Shub fleet closed in from another. The two great boogeymen of human history had finally come calling, and the barricades stood largely unmanned. The ragged remains of the Imperial Fleet were scattered across the Empire, fighting doggedly against impossible odds, while great armies fought to the death on the worlds below, no quarter asked or given. Ghost Warriors, Furies, Grendels, and insect aliens stormed Humanity's last redoubts, where men, women, and children fought with desperate courage for their species' survival. Humanity might be going down, but it was going down fighting.
    The nano plague was everywhere now, springing up on planet after planet. There were quarantines and forbidden zones and draconian health regulations, and none of them did a damned bit of good. There were no warning signs, no anticipatory symptoms; nothing that could be guarded against or fought. Infected people watched in horror as their bodies suddenly mutated and transformed, their genetic code being rewritten from the inside. Grotesque and awful shapes lurched through the streets of human cities, killing and feeding and pleading for help, before they finally succumbed to the inevitable final stage of the plague: meltdown. Many tried suicide, or called for mercy killings, but the nanotech
    within them remorselessly kept them alive until the final nightmarish end. Great gray rivers of undifferentiated goo swept slowly through silent and deserted human cities.
    Shub had always understood the effectiveness of terror weapons.
    There was mass rioting everywhere, as law and order and social structures broke down. Looting became epidemic as supplies grew scarce, and distribution became increasingly haphazard, and people grew tired of queuing for hours outside stores with mostly empty shelves. Panic spread faster than the plague. Religious crazies came bursting out of the woodwork, like rats joining a sinking ship, prophesying doom and destruction and the end of all things. According to them, all kinds of Messiahs were on their way, but somehow always tomorrow, never today.
    The revealing of Shub agents in high positions had only boosted the already general air of paranoia. People no longer trusted one another, even when it was clearly vital that they had to work together for survival. All it took was a shouted accusation, and a mob could form in seconds, chasing suspected Shub agents to their deaths. Guards patrolled the streets in large groups, backed by merciless laws and powers of a type not seen since Lionstone's last days. They maintained a kind of peace, even if it was often only the peace of the newly dead.
    The media ran little but news channels, often twenty-four hours a day. The public was desperate for information, and even bad news was better than the nightmares their imaginations conjured up when there was no news. Live broadcasting dominated, mostly because things were happening too fast now for reflection or in-depth study. The only ray of hope left in the Empire was the
    forthcoming Royal Wedding on Golgotha. Parliament made sure the preparations got extensive coverage. It was the only thing left that still distracted people.
    The public had lost its faith in heroes. Jack Random had gone crazy, Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d'Ark were missing, presumed dead, and no one had ever trusted Ruby Journey anyway. And the one they'd loved the most, the daredevil esper hero Julian Skye, had died in a suicide pact with his love BB Chojiro. His holo show was still popular, though. Fans held candlelight vigils outside his old Family house, declaring fervently that their hero would return to save them all, just when things seemed darkest. Some legends never run out of steam.
    The hunt was still on for Daniel Wolfe, the nano carrier; Public Enemy Number One. There was no trace of him anywhere, which should have been impossible. No human on any world would