Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

Owen?"
    The reporters stirred, and looked at one another. "You haven't heard?" said Thompson.
    "Heard what?" said Ruby. "We've been busy."
    "Owen Deathstalker and Hazel d'Ark are missing, presumed dead," said Thompson slowly. "Constance Wolfe will be marrying Robert Campbell instead."
    The floating cameras whirred in unison as they concentrated on close-ups. Random and Ruby looked at each other.
    "They can't be dead," Random said finally. "They just can't. I'd know… I'm sure I'd know, if they were…"
    "We haven't been mentally linked to either of them for a long time," said Ruby.
    "We let things drive us apart. But even so, I'm sure we would have felt…
    something…"
    "They can't be dead," said Random. "They were the best of us."
    "They were bastards!" said a harsh, angry voice. "Just like you!"
    There were sudden shouts and scuffles among the journalists as one of them suddenly produced a gun. He put it to another reporter's head, and she stood very still, the blood draining out of her face. Her fellow journalists quickly
    fell back, partly to get themselves out of harm's way, and partly to be sure their cameras were getting uninterrupted coverage. This was news. Soon the gunman and his hostage stood alone on the landing pad, his gun pressed tight against the woman's head. The guards looked very much like they wanted to do something, but they had no weapons. The gunman had eyes only for Random and Ruby. He glared at them both, his mouth stretched in a desperate snarl.
    "You try anything and she's dead," he said, almost panting for breath in his intensity. "I'll blow her head clean off her shoulders!"
    "If she dies, you die," said Ruby flatly.
    "You think I care?" said the gunman, and his voice was cold and flat as death.
    "Let's all be very calm about this," said Random. "Ruby; get your hand away from your gun. No one needs to get hurt here."
    "Wrong," said the gunman. "Someone's going to die here today."
    "Better men than you have tried to take us down," said Ruby.
    "Hush, Ruby," said Random. "You're not helping." He moved his hands ostentatiously away from his weapons, keeping his eyes fixed on the gunman.
    "Let's take this one step at a time. Why don't you start by telling us your name?"
    "You don't know me, do you?"
    "No," said Random. "Should I?"
    "No real reason why you should, I suppose. I was just another soldier, fighting beside you in the streets during the rebellion. Right here in this city. My name is Grey Harding. No one important. Just like all the other poor bastards who died fighting your war."
    "We all lost people we cared for…"
    "Don't give me that crap. Random! You didn't know us. Didn't care about our
    little lives. We were all just bit players and spear carriers in your great heroic saga. You had the power and the glory; we were just grunts with scavenged weapons. You might love the people as a whole, but in the end you just used people like us, and didn't give a damn whether we lived or died, as long as you and your kind came out on top."
    "It wasn't like that," said Random. "It was a people's rebellion…"
    "I was there! I saw my friends bleed and die, while you went on unscathed!"
    Harding's voice broke, and for a moment he seemed very near tears. But his anger pushed that aside almost immediately, and his gun never wavered an inch from his hostage's head. "I never really gave a damn about your war. Whoever's in charge, life for people like me, people at the bottom, never really changes. We marched off to war singing, because we'd been promised a chance to fight beside living legends, and afterwards nothing would ever be the same again. But in the end I saw damn all honor or glory, and most of my family and friends are dead. I saw them fall one by one, fighting strangers on behalf of strangers. And afterwards, when I went home, I found my village had been destroyed in an Empire reprisal raid. Women and children are homeless and starving now, because their menfolk marched off to war and never came back.
    "And after all we paid in blood and suffering and death, nothing's really changed. The same sort of people are still in power. And I… I can't sleep at night. I did… terrible things in the war, just to survive. Terrible things.
    There are ghosts at my shoulder, with familiar faces. I jump at loud noises, and sometimes I hurt people for no good reason. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm not the man I used to be, and I'm scared of who I've become. So you tell me, Random; what was it