Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

fallen, but Douglas embraced the name, and the Rookery loved it.
    Douglas had been pleasantly surprised to discover that these thieves, con men, rogues, and rascals were far more capable in the field than Finn’s trained military fanatics. It was as though they possessed some spark, some extra quality or vitality, that had been bred out of the city’s more civilized people. Certainly the Rookery had ways of acquiring tech, information, or anything else that might be needed, that would never have occurred to the law-abiding mind. The King of Thieves had learned to appreciate and value the wild talents of the Rookery. They were the only ones whose spirits the Emperor had been unable to crush. In fact, the more he tried to oppress them, the more determined they became. Years of living as despised outcasts had put iron in their souls and fire in their bellies. Douglas sometimes thought about the implications of that, and what it said about the rest of the Empire. Not least because the Rookery was changing him too. He had become wilder and more flexible in his thinking. And he liked it.
    Cautiously at first, and then more openly, he plotted attacks against Finn’s weak spots, and the ragged warriors of the Rookery went out and ran joyous rings around Finn’s security. They came and went and did their damage and no one even knew they’d been there, until the explosions started. The information they gathered enabled Douglas to identify more weak links, and how to cripple them in inventive and distressing ways. Finn sent his security people running madly back and forth, but somehow they were never where they were needed, always fated to arrive just in time to pick up the pieces afterwards. They were becoming a laughingstock, and they knew it.
    The actual territory that made up the Rookery expanded every day. It was now the only safe haven on all Logres, and people came from all across the planet, defying all dangers to cross the Rookery’s shifting boundaries and find relief at last from Finn, his people, and his thralls. The Rookery had to grow to accommodate them all. And so it swallowed up adjoining streets, and then adjoining blocks, on and on until it made up almost a full quarter of the Parade of the Endless. Finn declared that it was death for anyone to even approach the Rookery, but it didn’t slow the flood of refugees. In the world that Finn had made, death was no longer anything to be feared. For many, it was the kindest thing that could happen to them.
    Douglas’s influence grew in other ways too. The aliens of the Rookery slowly but surely infiltrated the substructures of the city, sliding and gliding through all the service tubes and maintenance levels, the sewers and the factory outlets. They thrived in conditions that humans couldn’t tolerate, working their plans in places the humans above never even considered as inhabitable. The aliens breathed poison gases and swam through deadly chemical baths, and mile by mile they gained control of all the tasks that had once been performed by the Shub robots: all the appalling but necessary work that made possible the city’s essential services. They restored power and water and sewage and all the other comforts that the Parade of the Endless had once taken for granted. And by shutting down these services in some areas and opening them in the Rookery, the aliens rapidly made the Rookery the most attractive place in the city to live.
    The aliens also made perfect unsuspected spies, listening from impossible places, their alien senses often picking up information that even the best tech would have missed. Finn would have been very surprised if he’d known how many aliens moved unsuspected through the crawl spaces and darker levels of his palace every night.
    Nina Malapert was also making a name for herself. As the main newscaster for the most popular and far-reaching underground news site, she had become the face of freedom and the voice of rebellion. Every day she told the people things they didn’t know, and promised hope for the future. Her pink mohawk was taller than ever, and she never wore the same makeup twice. Everyone watched her broadcasts, even though they could be executed on the spot if they were caught doing it. (After all, you could be executed without trial for pretty much anything these days.) The people needed to know what was happening, and Finn’s official news programs had become increasingly bland propaganda. The people reading the