Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

fired, and people lay dead and dying in the streets, often trampled underfoot in the crush. Espers flew through the smoke-filled air, throwing themselves in waves at the gravity barges in reckless attacks; grim, brave, suicidal smiles on their faces.
    Owen and Hazel cut and hacked their way through walls of Imperial marines, refusing to be stopped or turned aside. Sometimes they fought side by side, and sometimes back to back, but no one could stand against them. Some troops actually turned and ran, rather than face the Deathstalker and the d'Ark.
    Whoever was filming the fighting was right there in the thick of it. Again and again, the camera zoomed in to show close-ups of Owen and Hazel's faces. And they . .. were so much less than legends, but so much more than human. The dark-haired Owen and the flame-haired Hazel, with sweat and blood on their panting faces. Stamping and thrusting and fighting like demons; so much stronger and faster and fiercer than the troops they faced.
    They were somehow finer, more focused, than any mere human should be; their every movement sharp and savage and ruthlessly efficient. Lewis had never seen anything like it, not even in the Arena. Owen and Hazel dashed themselves, over and over again, against overwhelming odds, performing miracles with casual grace, cutting down everything that was sent against them. Sometimes laughing, sometimes
    snarling, sometimes bleeding; but never once hesitating or turning away. Lewis watched, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, a great pride filling his heart until he thought it would burst. The Deathstalker and the d'Ark, doing what they did best, what they were born to do. Spitting in evil's face and damning it to Hell, because somebody had to. They were killers, not saints; but damn, they were glorious!
    The viewscreen went blank for a moment, and Lewis sat down suddenly in his chair again as his legs gave out. He was breathing as hard as if he'd been there himself, fighting beside his ancestor. He'd seen films, of course, and docudrama reconstructions, but nothing in the sanitized legends could have prepared him for the reality . . .
    A new scene filled the viewscreen, and there was Jack Random, the professional rebel, and Ruby Journey, the bounty hunter; defending the entrance to a valley on the planet Loki against a whole army of Shub's Furies and Ghost Warriors. Jack and Ruby, side by side, standing their ground against an enemy even they couldn't have hoped to defeat. They looked like heroes. Warriors. They looked like they knew they were going to die. Out beyond the valley, Ghost Warriors stood in countless ranks. Dead men raised to fight again in the service of Shub, with gray rotting flesh, animated by computer brains and implanted servomechanisms in their dead muscles. They looked vile beyond belief; Shub's contempt for the weaknesses of flesh turned into physical and psychological weapons. Lewis looked briefly at the blue steel robot standing beside him, and thought he'd never feel the same about the AIs again.
    "We were different then," the robot said quietly. "We were wrong. We did not understand, that all that lives is holy. We have sworn to die by our own hand, rather then become again what we once were.
    Now watch . . ."
    The dead men came surging forward, howling horribly with their decaying vocal cords, and Jack Random and Ruby Journey shared one last smile, and stood their ground. They fought savagely, with sword and gun and unnatural strength and speed, and still they took wound after bloody wound, dying by inches, stamping and slipping in their own pooled blood, but never once retreating. The Ghost Warriors came at them again and again, their numbers seemingly endless, only to crash fruitlessly against Random and Journey, like the sea pounding two unyielding rocks. And again, they were warriors rather than legends; but somehow that was even more impressive. Lewis thought he'd never seen anything so brave in his whole life.
    Legends might inspire awe, and even worship, but it took real men and women to move the heart like this.
    The screen went blank, and disappeared again. Lewis let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
    The robot was bowing its blank face over pressed-together hands again.
    "They fought for hours," said the robot. "And they would not yield. In the end, they put their lives on the line, to summon up enough power to defeat us with their Maze-given abilities. They could do wondrous things in those days, the men