Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

where they detonated themselves like psionic grenades. Massive explosions rocked the targeted barges. Steel hulls shattered, and waves of fire swept through crowded corridors. Some began slow, controlled descents back to earth, while they still could. But even after the hundred and twenty espers had dashed themselves against Finn's fleet and given it everything they had, including their lives, the main bulk of the fleet still pressed on, not even slowed. It was just too big to be turned aside by individuals, no matter how brave.
    The whole battle was over in less than half an hour. The fleet thundered on, towards the floating city.
    On the landing pads ofNew Hope , Crow Jane saw the last esper mind of the attacking force gutter and go out, as she quietly sang the last few words of the battle song along with it. The oversoul hadn't been able to save any of the minds. The Icarus Working was just too important to risk a lapse in concentration, even for a moment. Crow Jane could feel it assembling in the back of her mind, like a great engine slowly coming to life.
    A slight and diffident figure appeared suddenly beside her, and she jumped despite herself. The Ecstatic called Joy was the only person onNew Hope who wasn't a part of the oversoul. Not least because the oversoul didn't want anything to do with his mind. The last of his kind, Joy's brain had been surgically altered so that he lived in a state of constant orgasm. Theoretically, he was capable of accessing all kinds of altered states of consciousness, seeing the past and the future as well as the present; but mostly he just smiled a lot and said things that made sense only later, if then. He nodded companionably to Crow Jane, as she recovered her composure. Perhaps his eyes were sad too. It was hard to tell, over that smile. He looked out into the sky, as though he could see the fleet coming.
    "Something is dying," he said softly. "Something is being born. The world turns, and something awful turns in its sleep, waiting to be summoned. We will all fly to glory. Nothing is ever forgotten, nothing is ever lost. The man with the sundered mind will be here soon. It's going to rain tomorrow."
    Crow Jane looked at him, too tired even to be properly exasperated. She would have liked to dig into his thoughts and drag out what he was really talking about, but knew better than to try. The few es-pers who'd tried to penetrate the Ecstatic's mind had staggered away dazed and giggling and speaking in tongues. The few glimpses they got of his mind's workings, past the never-ending thunder of pure pleasure, baffled and disturbed them. Whole new ways of thinking that made no sense at all—or perhaps so much sense that the normal mind couldn't accommodate them. But sometimes Joy knew things, and sometimes he said things that mattered, so the oversoul let him stay. It had a strange feeling it was going to need the Ecstatic.
    "They'll be here soon," said Crow Jane, just to be saying something. "Stupid bastards. Don't they know that by attacking us, they're cutting their own throats? We were supposed to be the Empire's early warning system, to guard against the coming of the Terror. With us gone, the next world in its path will get no warning at all."
    "You could still monitor the situation, in exile," said Joy, drifting very close to sanity for a moment.
    "Why should we?" said Crow Jane, her mind still full of death songs. "Let Humanity die. Let all the stupid bastards die."
    "The Terror comes for us all," observed Joy, swaying slightly from side to side. "Wide-eyed and terrible, endlessly howling, a lamentation in the night."
    Crow Jane ignored him. She could feel the Icarus Working coming together in the back of her head, but something was wrong. Something was… missing. Crow Jane felt a lurch in the mass consciousness of the oversoul, as though a foot had reached down for a step that wasn't there. A vital component wasn't where it should have been. Jenny Psycho, the last living soul to be touched by the Mater Mundi and raised to greatness, the most powerful single mind in the oversoul, wasn't there. She'd stepped out, gone away, vanished without even leaving a note to say when she'd be back. Crow Jane shared the shock and astonishment radiating through the oversoul. Jenny Psycho's power had been a vital ingredient of the Icarus Working. It could still go ahead—even now, a thousand minds were busy calculating the necessary changes—but suddenly the whole thing had become a