Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

as it happened—or, just possibly, a world's miraculous escape from utter destruction. The news stations had editorials ready to run either way. Pretty much the whole Empire was watching breathlessly as Heracles IV's dearly purchased defense systems activated. State of the art disrupter cannon fired on the herald from orbiting stations as it approached, hitting the intruder again and again with almost unimaginable energies. Forces that had scorched all the life from whole planets struck the herald full-on, and left it unscathed. Mindbombs powerful enough to madden whole cities detonated one after the other, to no effect. Sensor arrays bathed the herald with every investigative technique known to the Empire, and they couldn't even decide on whether the herald was really there or not. The herald just kept coming.
    And now there was only one layer of defensive tech left: the untried, mysterious alien tech supplied by MogMor. No one on the planet even knew what it was, or what it was supposed to do.
    InOrpheusCity , capital of Heracles IV, all hell was breaking loose. The population was torn between mass prayer sessions, rioting in the streets, hiding in bomb shelters, and the occasional mass suicide pact.
    All those who could leave had already done so. The last few ships were still racing away from Heracles IV, and praying they'd put enough distance between them and the planet to be able to drop into the safety of hyperspace before it was too late. But right in the heart of the city, three Paragons strolled down
    the main street, passing a bottle of wormwood brandy back and forth between them, and looking curiously up at the sky. Sent by Finn Durandal to make a firsthand report on the Terror's approach, all three were possessed by the uber-esper Screaming Silence. Once, their names had been Kelly Fox, Yvonne Church, and Avraam Dusk, but now someone else watched the skies through their eyes and waited interestedly to see what would happen. Screaming Silence had had a pleasant enough time waiting— dining and drinking of the finest the world had to offer, sleeping with each other till they were sore because no one else would come near them, and otherwise indulging the uber-esper's never-ending appetites by proxy. The Paragons themselves were becoming rather damaged, but that didn't matter.
    They would die here anyway, once the Terror drew too close and Screaming Silence had to leave.
    Finn had sent them on the grounds that since they were already mentally controlled, they might be immune to the Terror's deadly voice; the never-ending scream that drove whole populations insane. He was really intrigued to see what would happen.
    The herald plowed through the last of the standard defenses as though they weren't even there, and came at last to the Mog Mor line.
    Activated by its approach, the alien tech unfolded, great gleaming shapes that blossomed into vast crystal flowers. Strange energies seethed around them, and space itself rippled and wavered. Terrible forces seized upon the herald, and strove to force it out of normal space and back into whatever hell it came from. Sinkholes and singularities flared briefly, pockmarking space, only to collapse in on themselves and disappear, ignored by the herald. One by one the Mog Mor devices overloaded and disintegrated, and the herald flew on, untouched.
    From a place that was not a place, it came—a nightmare given shape and form, heading inexorably for the sun of Heracles IV
    Screaming Silence reached out curiously with her mind, forcing her psionic abilities through the limited minds of her thralls. They cried out in agony, blood leaking from their nostrils and eyes, but she didn't care. Her thoughts rose up from the planet to touch the coming herald, and then immediately withdrew, shocked and sickened. She couldn't bear to be near it, even for a moment. She slammed back into the three Paragons' minds, and then abandoned them, fleeing back to Logres, and safety.
    The plan had been for Screaming Silence to stay until the very last moment, until the herald's vicious spawn came howling out of the sun, and perhaps even until the appearance of the Terror itself; but one glimpse of the herald's terrible true nature was enough to panic and terrorize the uber-esper. She turned and ran, abandoning her thralls to their fates, and two women and one man cried out in shock and horror and disgust at what had been done to them. They clung to each other, shaking and shuddering, soiled