Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

all for, really?"
    "I understand how you feel," said Random. "I really do. I've felt the same way, sometimes. But I've learned my lesson. I've come back to Golgotha to clean house. No more deals, no more compromises. I'll put things right, this time, or die trying."
    "Words," said Harding. "You were always good with words, Jack Random."
    "Look, what do you want?" said Ruby. "Money? Publicity? Some kind of ransom for your hostage's life?"
    Harding looked confused for a moment. "No. No; she was just to make sure I had your attention. I had to be sure you'd listen to me." He lowered his gun and pushed the reporter away from him. "Go. Go on; get out of here." He watched disinterestedly as she ran for the safety of her fellow journalists, and nothing moved in his face as he watched Thompson hold her while she cried. He turned back to Random and Ruby, the gun pointed nowhere in particular for the moment.
    "Now," he said. "Now it's just you and me."
    "Put the gun away," said Random. "You don't need it anymore."
    "Yes, I do," said Harding.
    "You can't hurt us," said Ruby.
    "I know that," said Harding. "I'm not stupid. I don't think anything can hurt you anymore. But I've said all I have to say. And I can't live with the things I did for you. With what I've become."
    He put the barrel of the gun in his mouth, and blew the back of his head off.
    His body crumpled to the landing pad with a quiet, defeated sound. And for a while all that could be heard was the quiet sobbing of the hostage, and the whirring of the news cameras as they got it all on film. Random moved slowly forward and looked down at the body.
    "I'm sorry, Grey Harding."
    "We have nothing to be sorry for," said Ruby. "Lionstone had to be brought down, for everyone's sake. Where was he, when it was just the five of us against the whole damned Empire?"
    Random looked at her. "We never did see Peter Savage fall on Loki, did we?"
    Ruby shrugged angrily. "People die in wars. Soldiers kill and die. That's what they're for. He got a chance to fight for something that really mattered. What else is there?"
    Random looked at her for a long moment, his face set and cold. "There has to be something else, Ruby. There has to be."
    Someone called out Random's name in an official tone of voice, and everyone looked round as a Parliamentary representative arrived at the landing pad with a company of armed guards. The representative wore his official scarlet sash proudly, but he was careful to keep the bulk of the armed guards between him and Random and Ruby. The reporters brightened up, sensing more possible conflict.
    Even the ex-hostage stopped sniffing, and paid attention. Overhead, the cameras jostled one another for position. The representative crashed to a halt a respectful distance before Random and Ruby, started to speak, and then took in the dead body lying on the pad with half its head missing. He swallowed audibly, then straightened his shoulders and did his best to fix Random with a commanding stare.
    "Don't bother," said Random. "Let me guess. We're under arrest, right?"
    "Well, yes…" said the representative.
    "Wrong," said Ruby. "We don't do arrest."
    "What does Parliament want this time?" said Random.
    The representative took in Random and Ruby's hostile faces, glanced at the dead
    body again, and abandoned his carefully prepared speech. "They need you Maze people. Your power and your insight. And with the Deathstalker and Hazel d'Ark dead…"
    "You're sure of that?" said Ruby. "There's no chance they're alive?"
    "I'm afraid not. Hazel d'Ark was abducted by the Blood Runners and taken to the Obeah Systems. The Deathstalker went after them. Nothing has been heard of either of them since. No one ever comes back from the Obeah Systems."
    Random looked at Ruby. "Try the mental link. We're much stronger together."
    They looked into each other's eyes, and their minds slammed together into a unison far greater than the sum of its parts. All around them they could see esper minds, burning like a forest of candles in the dark of the night. Here and there a greater mind burned like the sun or shone like a star, while other, stranger lights were too powerful to look at directly. Random and Ruby brushed against them as they rose high above the surface of Golgotha, and names swept briefly through their thoughts. Diana Vertue. Mater Mundi. Varnay… And then they were gone, left behind, as Random and Ruby's thoughts swept out beyond the planet, surging on through the populated