Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

her barbed tail lashed viciously around to slam into Rose's armored chest. The force of the blow sent her flying twenty feet. Brett howled with rage. He ran forward, climbed the eight-foot-tall reptiloid like a ladder, and used both hands to thrust his sword into Saturday's eye. She roared furiously.
    Dark blood ran down her face. She bucked her shoulders, and Brett went flying, leaving his sword protruding from her eye socket. He hit the floor rolling, and was quickly back on his feet. Saturday surged towards him. Brett drew a dagger from his boot and held his ground, standing between the reptiloid and the semiconscious Rose.
    And then Saturday stopped abruptly, and looked back over her shoulder. Owen had hold of her by the tail. He yanked hard, and the reptiloid stumbled backwards, caught off balance. Her great wedge-shaped
    head swung round towards Owen, her mouth open, revealing teeth like knives. Owen let go of her tail, darted forward and grabbed Saturday's head with both hands. He twisted sharply, and the sound of the reptiloid's neck breaking was very loud in the sudden quiet.
    Saturday hit the steel floor with a crash, and lay there stretched out and shuddering. She looked up at Owen with her one remaining eye. Her breathing was slow and labored, and blood drooled out the side of her mouth.
    "Thank you," she said indistinctly. "A warrior's death. An honorable end, for…"
    "Shut the hell up," said Owen. He bent down and slammed his fist into the reptiloid's chest. The armor plating cracked and collapsed inwards. Owen thrust his hand deep into the abdomen, grabbed the heart and ripped it out. Saturday convulsed, and then was still. Owen looked at the still-beating heart in his hand, and crushed it. Purple meat and dark blood oozed from his closed fist. Owen threw the mess away, and looked around him. Brett was tending to Rose, who was sitting up and looking rather embarassed at being taken out so easily. The Shub robot approached Owen, and bowed low to him.
    "You are indeed the true Deathstalker."
    "Don't you start," said Owen. A thought occurred to him, and he fixed the robot with a thoughtful gaze.
    "Is that why you didn't join in the fight? Because you wanted to see if I still had it?"
    The robot just looked at him with its blank face. There was a groan to his left, and Owen looked round to see Captain Silence rising awkwardly to his feet.
    "I must be getting old," he said glumly. "They didn't use to be able to sneak up on me."
    "You just made a dent in a steel wall with your head!" said Brett. "That blow would have killed anyone else!"
    "I'm not supposed to be anyone else," said Silence.
    Lewis came back, with a repaired but still somewhat fragile-looking Jesamine on his arm. She held her tattered dress front together to preserve her modesty, and smiled weakly at the others. Lewis nodded respectfully to the robot.
    "That is one hell of a regeneration tank you've got there. I've never seen the process work so fast. But if you ever wait that long again to tell me something I need to know, I will dismantle you with a blunt spoon.
    Do you understand me, Shub?"
    The robot bowed to him. "My apologies to you, Sir Deathstalker. And to the lady."
    Jesamine looked at the dead and eviscerated reptiloid, sniffed loudly, and gave the body a weak but heartfelt kick. "I never liked you, you overgrown handbag. You tore off one of my tits, you cow! I'm still not sure the new one matches the other."
    "I promise I'll check them both thoroughly later," Lewis said solemnly, and they both laughed.
    Owen looked at Lewis and Jesamine together, and then at Rose and Brett, and a slow cold tiredness ran through him, as he recognized in them the love he'd never known himself. Hazel's missing. No one knows where she is. It's been two hundred years… Owen met Silence's gaze, and they shared a moment of
    understanding. It's always hard to outlive the ones you love. She can't be dead. I'd know if she was dead.
    To hell with all that, Owen thought abruptly. I've got work to do.
    He summoned up all his power, feeling it seethe and boil within him, and sent his mind soaring up and out. He rose up from the planet Haden, blasting through the atmosphere, shining like the sun. The fleet and the Shub ships were spread out before him, like so many clever toys. Owen concentrated, and suddenly he was standing on all the bridges on all the starcruisers in the Imperial fleet. Not a holo image, but the real man himself, present on a thousand ships