Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

had to do was think about it, and suddenly they were sailing across open space towards the Imperial ship they’d chosen. The Heritage was barreling along at full speed, but they caught up with her eerily fast. Her shields flared all the colors of the rainbow as they soaked up disrupter fire from all directions. Lewis slowed to a halt in front of the ship’s hull, and then hit the force shield with his fist. The energies shuddered and rippled, but held together. Lewis and Jesamine hit the shield at the same time, and it collapsed. Lewis would have been seriously impressed, and a little worried, about the implications of that if he’d had the time, but he didn’t so he just got on with it. He and Jesamine descended to the great steel curve before them, walked along the side of the ship until they came to an airlock, and then kicked it in.
    Once they were back inside again, they began breathing normally, as though they’d never stopped. Their hearing came back in a rush, and they both winced at the racket of overlapping alarm sirens. Lewis checked his hands, and then Jesamine’s, but neither seemed particularly cold. They both shrugged, and looked around for someone to fight. They went walking through the enemy ship, and everywhere they went, people fled from them screaming. Many of them called out the Deathstalker name as they ran, and Lewis took a certain cold satisfaction from the terror in their voices.

    The battle went on, ship targeting ship, the occasional vast explosion as a craft blew apart, dead crew thrown tumbling through space like confetti. Silence’s fleet fought well and strongly, but they were severely weakened by the loyalist uprising, and there was no telling which way the fight might have gone, when suddenly Carrion and his Ashrai came flying out of nowhere in their thousands, soaring across space on their widespread membraneous wings as though born to it. Carrion led his gargoyle aliens in sweeping attacks against the Imperial fleet, their huge forms slamming right through force shields as though they weren’t there, to tear steel hulls with their terrible claws. And inside the Imperial ships voices arose, crying It’s the dragons! Owen’s dragons, come to punish us for not recognizing the true Deathstalker!
    Their morale never really recovered after that, and ship after ship surrendered. Silence’s fleet quickly took control, blowing apart the few hard-core fanatical ships that refused to surrender, and suddenly it was all over. Admiral Shapiro had a nervous breakdown and shot himself rather messily in the face. Captain Vardalos of the Heritage reluctantly took command, and oversaw the general surrender, which Admiral Silence graciously accepted, to save further loss of life.

    Captain Vardalos sat slumped in her command chair. The main viewscreen before her showed both fleets at a standstill, surrounded by the drifting hulks of crippled or destroyed ships, and Owen’s dragons flying unprotected through space. How could she have been so wrong? The blessed Owen really had returned, in the hour of Humanity’s greatest need, just as the legends always said he would; and they had denied him. They had been found wanting in their faith. Damn the Emperor and his lies.
    She looked up slowly as her second hovered uncertainly beside her. “Captain, they’re here!”
    “Who’s here?” Vardalos struggled to focus her thoughts. “Has Silence sent emissaries across already?”
    “Well, sort of. Lewis Deathstalker and Jesamine Flowers walked across open space, ripped open an air lock and walked right in. And now they’re standing outside the bridge, demanding to talk to you!”
    Vardalos had to shut her eyes for a moment. It was all getting a bit much for her.
    “Let them in. Before they kick the door down.”
    Fortuna let them in, and they came forward to greet the captain. To their credit, they didn’t look especially smug. They’d had no trouble with the Heritage ’s crew after the surrender. They’d already been overwhelmed by what the Deathstalker and the diva had done, and the arrival of the Ashrai had been the last straw. Their spirits were so thoroughly broken they all but prostrated themselves before Lewis and Jesamine as they made their way to the bridge. A few even lashed themselves with improvised whips, as penance. Lewis and Jesamine gave them plenty of room.
    Captain Vardalos studied the man and woman standing before her. They didn’t look all that special, but there was