Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

a certain kind of help. He couldn't be everywhere at once, and he'd always known that to solve the really big problems you needed experts and specialists. So after much thought, and not a little research, he'd put together a shopping list of the right, or rather wrong, people. It hadn't been too difficult, not with his Paragon's resources and connections. He'd begin with a certain devious con man. Finn had given Brett Random strict instructions to be at a certain place at a certain time before releasing him, but he'd never expected Brett to actually show up. In fact, Finn would have been disappointed if he had. It would have meant Brett wasn't the kind of man Finn needed.
    He knew where Brett would be hiding. All he had to do was go and get him, and the awful thing Finn was planning could begin. He would plunge the Empire into blood and terror, set its cities ablaze, and utterly destroy what men of good will had spent two centuries putting together. Just to please his wounded pride. Finn Durandal descended on his gravity sled into the hidden dark heart of the Parade of the Endless, smiling a predator's smile, his heart beating just a little faster in anticipation.
    It was called the Rookery. A square mile or so of territory right in the center of the city that didn't officially exist. A dark and dangerous warren of crammed-together buildings and alleyways that hadn't changed its unpleasant nature in hundreds of years. All records of its existence had been erased long ago, in the time of rebuilding after the Great Rebellion. All it took was a little money in the right hands, and all the official maps and computers conveniently forgot that there had ever been an old thieves' quarter.
    Public transport was routed around it, and knowledge of the few remaining ways in and out was passed down verbally, and only to those who needed to know. It had its own power supply, its own secret economy, and you entered entirely at your own risk. The Rookery existed because people will always need somewhere to buy and sell the kinds of pleasures you're not supposed to want in a Golden Age.
    The Three Cripples was a bar of the very worst character. Seedy would nave been a step up. It was a dark sprawling place with blacked-out windows, good booze, indifferent food, and a rotten reputation.
    You got in by intimidating or bribing the doorman, and after that you were fair game for every thief, cheat, thug, and doxy who called the bar home. Most notably, it was a regular haunt for the ever-changing crowd of undesirables who called themselves Randoms Bastards.
    In the main bar, in an atmosphere thick with smoke that was almost wholly illegal in nature, Brett Random was buying drinks for one and all, on the strength of the more than serious money he'd made selling his unauthorized coverage of King Douglas's Coronation. The tabloid news channels had all but gone to war over the bidding, and Brett had played them off against each other with a slickness that impressed even him. Brett Random was rich; but money had never really mattered much to him. The game was what mattered; money was just how you kept score. So; it was drinks on the house, and the best of everything for him and his friends, while it lasted. And then he'd go out and dip into some other suckers pockets, metaphorically speaking. It was what he did best.
    As long as the money kept flowing there was no shortage of people willing to drink and carouse at his expense and tell him what a fine fellow he was, so Brett had a large, noisy, and good-natured audience all to himself as he roared and boasted and, not for the first time, pushed his claim to be the greatest of all Randoms Bastards.
    His audience was a motley crowd, all considered. Men and women from a hundred worlds and societies, most of whom couldn't go home again. Sometimes their families actually sent them regular payments, on the understanding that they'd stay away. They lived the outlaw life and thrived on it, preying on the suckers and each other with equal glee. The death rate was high; but they found ways to keep cheerful, most of them illegal outside of the Rookery. There were even some aliens; certain individuals who'd developed tastes or needs that couldn't be satisfied back on their homeworlds, or who'd gone native after spending too long among humankind, and couldn't be allowed back for fear of contamination.
    The Rookery embraced them all. It was a vile and squalid place, where they'd steal the fillings out of