Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

to my office, so I can see it for myself!"
    Security sped through the Cathedral at a run, driven on by Angelo's increasingly hysterical orders, but the Ecstatic was nowhere to be found. No one saw him leave, and he didn't show up on any of the security monitors. Which should have been impossible. So Angelo got on the comm again, to some of his more fanatical Neumen supporters, and personally gave the death order for all the Ecstatics. In any city, on any world. Let them see what excommunication from the new Church really meant. . . Let the law bleat what it liked; by the time they got their act together it would all be over. And if any of his Neumen assassins should be caught, well; fanatics were always so eager to become martyrs for their Cause . . .
    The Ecstatics as a movement were finished. They were already as good as extinct. They were history.
    But somehow that didn't comfort Angelo Bellini at all.
    Ahead of you is terror . . .
    Within the hour, the Parade of the Endless was swarming with Neumen fanatics, proud in their new Church armor, hunting down Ecstatics with gun and steel and missionary zeal, killing them openly in the streets. The peacekeepers mobilized in force to stop them, calling in reinforcements from all the surrounding cities, but still they were too widely spread, and greatly outnumbered. Excommunicated, condemned, and damned by the Church as heretics, the Ecstatics were thrown out of their seminaries, retreats, and churches, and the doors slammed and locked behind them. No one in the Church would hide or succor them. No one dared. The Neumen ran through city streets howling like wolves, blood dripping thickly from their blades. Most of the Ecstatics were easy targets. They didn't run. They walked calmly through the streets, unwilling or unable to defend themselves. They smiled kindly on their murderers, making no attempt to escape, and they died easily, still smiling their disturbing smiles. The bodies piled up, and blood ran in the gutters of the perfect city. When individual peacekeepers got in the way, the Neumen cut them down too.
    The Paragon Emma Steel heard shooting, and came swooping down on her gravity sled, to see half a dozen Neumen assassins in Church Militant trappings pursuing a lone Ecstatic down a main street. They were openly firing disrupters, but somehow their target was never where they aimed. He ran down the middle of the road, luckily free of traffic for the moment, while people lined both sides of the street and jeered and yelled crude insults at the running man. They scattered like sheep as Emma's sled came shrieking down at full speed, and she slammed it to an abrupt halt between the running Neumen and their prey. The six men stumbled to a halt as she jumped lithely down from her sled, her gun and sword already in her hands. They were fanatics, but they knew who she was.
    They looked at each other, and then at the Ecstatic, standing quietly just beyond Emma's hovering sled, looking back at them, smiling. The Neumen looked at Emma Steel, slowly advancing on them, and
    anywhen else they would probably have done the sensible thing and turned and run. But their senses were maddened by the chase, blood from their previous kills still dripping from their weapons, and after all, there were six of them against just one Paragon. And they knew from the riot that sometimes Paragons die just as easily as anyone else. One man raised his energy gun, and fired it point blank. The force shield on Emma's arm intercepted the blast, and the energy beam ricocheted harmlessly away.
    Committed now, the Neumen howled wordlessly and threw themselves at her.
    Emma cut down the first two to reach her with ruthless efficiency, her sword a blur as it cut through throat and gut. She surged forward while her first two victims were still crumpling to the blood-spattered ground, and then she was in and among the other four before they knew what was happening. They cried out as steel ripped through their flesh, while all their swords found was air. They were fanatics, but Emma Steel was a warrior. She killed them all in a matter of moments, and then looked unhurriedly about her.
    Six dead men lay in bloody heaps in the street, and she wasn't even breathing hard. The crowds lining both sides of the street were silent, their faces sullen, angry, cheated out of the death they wanted. One of them stepped forward, her face drawn in cold, ugly lines. She glared at Emma Steel.
    "How dare you interfere in