Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

to go. Finn wasn't there. Brett paced back and forth, chewing on a white knuckle, trying to think what to do. Rose was out of control, Finn's ambitions were out of sight, and he ... he had had enough. Brett stopped pacing. He had had enough. To hell with Finn, and Rose, and all the other pressures that were eating him alive, and making him into the kind of man he'd always despised. The kind who just went along with things they knew were wrong, because they were too scared not to. No, it was time for Brett to do what he did best; run.
    But he couldn't just leave. He needed ammunition; something he could take with him that would keep Finn off his back. Something sufficiently incriminating to keep the Durandal from even looking for him.
    Brett looked thoughtfully at Finn's computer, and then sat down before it and fired it up. Breaking into Finn's secret files was no big deal for someone of Brett's wide-ranging talents, especially when he just happened to know a whole bunch of entry codes that Finn didn't know Brett had. Amazing what you could see over someone's shoulder from the other side of the room, if you knew what you were doing.
    Brett found a set of files that looked particularly interesting, protected by some frankly amateurish firewalls, and opened them up. And that was when Brett came to his second great shock of the day.
    Finn was planning to use some (unnamed) allies to track down and ambush every single Paragon, once they were safely isolated from backup, on their great Quest. Because the Paragons were the only real threat remaining to Finn's plans. Brett was horrified. He'd always secretly admired the Paragons; not least because they were everything he was not. They were the kind of people he just knew his legendary ancestors would have approved of, while he very definitely was not. Brett had no doubt this threat was real. It was exactly the kind of cold-blooded, logical thing Finn would do. Never mind that these people were his ex-partners, and (supposedly) friends. Never mind the importance of their Quest. They were in Finn's way, so they had to go.
    Brett downloaded the files onto a data crystal, and then shut down the computer, after taking steps to ensure no one would ever know he'd been there. And then he got up and did some more pacing back and forth, pausing now and again to kick the furniture. He had to tell someone . . . but who could he tell?
    Who would listen, to someone like him? Who could he turn to, who might not already be one of Finn's
    people? The Durandal had allies everywhere now. Some who knew what he was, and some who didn't.
    Either way; no one was going to believe a proven con man, even with the data crystal . . . Showing it to the wrong person would be his death warrant . . .
    So Brett did what he always did when faced with danger and a problem he couldn't solve; he ran away.
    He ran back into the Rookery; still the best place for anyone looking to disappear from the world for a while. Brett had a number of boltholes he'd gone to great pains to keep concealed from Finn; just in case things didn't work out. One of them was a very secret establishment belonging to an old friend; a human/alien hybrid called Nikki Sixteen, who ran a specialist brothel called Loving The Alien. A very private, very discreet operation, serving a very select clientele. Basically, it was a knocking shop for people who liked having sex with aliens.
    Humans having sex with aliens was extremely illegal, for all kinds of moral, philosophical, and political reasons. (Aliens might be equal, but they weren't that equal.) So while establishments like Loving The Alien inevitably existed, they could only thrive safely in the Rookery, where no one cared what or who you did, as long as your credit was good. To be fair, most alien species were just as opposed to the practice, for their own complicated reasons. And on the rare occasions when humans and aliens proved interfertile, the hybrid results could only exist safely in places like the Rookery. Nikki Sixteen ran her place at least partly as an act of rebellion and defiance; making it possible for the like-minded to get together. For a price. And she only sometimes recorded what went on in her sound-proofed rooms, for blackmail or retail purposes. Because a girl had to make a living. Even if she was only partly a girl.
    Nikki Sixteen was half human, half N'Jarr. Seven feet tall, she was a dark blue/gray color, with interlocking bony plates forming a protective