Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

worlds that made up the Empire. Lights came and went, some brighter than others, but nowhere did they find any trace of the two individual minds that had blazed brighter than suns or stars. Random and Ruby's thoughts raced from one side of the Empire to the other, and there was no sign anywhere of Owen Deathstalker or Hazel d'Ark.
    Random and Ruby fell back into their own heads, and their thoughts separated.
    They looked at each other for a long time.
    "They're not here anymore," said Random finally. "There's nowhere in this universe they could hide from us."
    "Then it's true," said Ruby. "They're dead. We're the last of the Maze people.
    The last of the original rebels." She turned away from him, so he wouldn't see her face. He didn't need to. "Hazel was my oldest friend," Ruby said quietly.
    "The only one who ever trusted me, and when I let her down, went right on trusting me anyway. She was my last link with my past, with the person I used to be, before all the madness started. She was a fine warrior and a better friend.
    I was never worthy of her."
    Random moved in beside her, trying to comfort her with his presence. He'd never seen Ruby really hurt before. "We'll both miss her. And the Deathstalker. A good fighter. A true hero. He brought me back from the dead on Mistworld. He believed in me when no one else did, including me. He made the rebellion possible."
    Ruby turned at last to look at him, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
    "What do we do, Jack?"
    "We go on," said Random. "They would expect that of us. Otherwise, they died for nothing."
    Ruby's face became calm and cold again. "Everybody dies. Everything ends. I've always known that. Nothing ever lasts."
    "Not even us?" said Random softly, but Ruby had no answer for him. He turned back to the Parliament representative. "Take us to Parliament. I have some things I want to say to them."

    Parliament was packed full, for once. Everyone wanted to hear what Random and Ruby had to say for themselves, about the mass executions on Loki. So of course Elias Gutman, as Speaker of the House, refused to let either of them say anything until the House had first listened to a series of reports on how the war was going. First up was Captain Eden Cross of the Excalibur, leading his
    section of the Imperial Fleet against the insect ships, out by the Shark Nebulae. A large viewscreen floated on the air before the packed MPs and the even more tightly packed public floor. On the screen. Empire ships went into battle against insect ships shaped like huge sticky balls of compacted webbing almost half a mile wide. Computers slowed the action down enough so that human eyes could follow it, and picked out moments of especial interest.
    Disrupter beams stabbed out from the Fleet, hammering against the unyielding shields of the insect ships, which flared and crackled with unknown energies, striking out in turn at Imperial ships the moment they came in range. Here and there a ship exploded silently, on one side or the other, as some attack overwhelmed someone's shields. It looked almost like an eerie dance, with each side advancing and retreating in turn, but every time a ship flared up and disappeared, someone died. Occasionally an insect ship would fight its way close enough to attach itself to the side of a Fleet ship, like a great white leech.
    And then the insects would breach the ship's hull and invade the human ship, and kill every living thing they encountered, until they were wiped out.
    Or until the humans were.
    The scene on the viewscreen changed suddenly, as the point of view switched to the security cameras inside a boarded Empire ship. Images switched swiftly from one scene to another, as different cameras tracked the insect invasion. They swarmed and scuttled through the steel corridors in a living, ravenous wave, all spindly legs and flickering antennae and clacking mandibles. Crewmen without armor fought bravely, till the insects dragged them down and ate them alive.
    Crewmen in hard suits finally arrived to blow great holes in the insect advance, destroying the aliens by the hundred, but there were always more, from tiny scurrying things to bugs the size of horses, slamming their heavy feet on the
    steel floors. When the disrupters fell silent, the crewmen tried flamethrowers, and when they were still pushed back deck by deck, they tried sealing off the lost areas and opening them to the cold vacuum of space. No crew ever abandoned their ship to save