Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

mercy, no prisoners, no survivors. Burn the place to the ground, and leave not one brick standing upon another. I give you charge over all my soldiers, my Church Militant and Pure Humanity fanatics, all the thralls you can persuade to follow you, and all the air support you will need. This time, there will be no stopping us. You will keep pushing forward, despite any or all losses, until you come out the other side and the Rookery is no more.
    “And Joseph, dear Joseph—if you don’t succeed, don’t come back.”

    Diana Vertue was out and about in the Rookery, despite the lateness of the hour. She’d got into the habit of making regular patrols on her own, ostensibly searching out spies and informers, but really just to immerse herself in the flow of life and the living. She’d been dead a long time, and she was still getting used to the unexpected fires and passions of the body she wore. People watched her go by, and sometimes smiled or nodded, but always from a safe distance. Diana Vertue was respected rather than loved. Jenny Psycho’s legend had taken some pretty strange paths down the years, and it had been pretty extreme to begin with. Even Robert and Constance hadn’t been able to sanitize her, not least because she was one of the few great heroes still around and kicking over the traces on a regular basis. Diana did like to think she’d mellowed a little since she returned.
    It felt good to be back in her body again, after so many years of existing only as a thought in the mass-mind of the oversoul; even if this wasn’t, strictly speaking, her own body. The Psycho Sluts believed Diana had manifested herself again through an act of will, and she had done nothing to dissuade them. It all helped her reputation. She didn’t tell them the truth because all her long years had done nothing to dull her natural paranoia. A secret shared is no longer a secret.
    Diana Vertue’s original body had been very thoroughly destroyed in a battle with the uber-espers, over a hundred years ago. She’d been led into an ambush by someone she’d had every reason to trust, and her old tired body and mind had been no match for all the uber-espers at once. Her body was utterly consumed in mental fires, but at the last moment her mind was caught up and preserved by the oversoul. A psionic working performed so swiftly and so expertly than even the uber-espers didn’t notice until it was too late. And so Diana Vertue had lived on, at peace and content in the mass-mind, until recent events had called to her and brought her forth again, renewed and revitalized in the fresh young body she’d kept preserved, in the event of such need as this.
    Diana had always had enemies, and knew the time would inevitably come when one of them proved stronger than her, so she made secret preparations for an emergency bolt-hole. After the war against the Recreated was over, Diana took advantage of her new (and fleeting) heroic status to do something awful, and unforgivable. She bullied the clone underground leaders into creating several brain-wiped adult clones, from her own tissues. This was a death crime, both for Diana Vertue and the clone leaders who agreed to it, but there were few indeed who’d ever been strong enough to say no to Jenny Psycho.
    She’d expected to die in one body and wake up in another, but the oversoul intervened. This had rather surprised Diana, who had never thought they’d want anyone as notoriously disruptive as her, but it seemed she was a hero to them, as well. And in their midst she had found unexpected peace of mind, and forgotten all about the clones.
    But she should have known; even heaven couldn’t last forever. She couldn’t abandon Logres to Finn, and leave with the rest of the espers in the Icarus Working; so when the floating city of New Hope took off for Mistworld, she had already left the oversoul and decanted her consciousness into one of the waiting clone bodies.
    It was still there, in its body bank, waiting to be occupied. She slid into it as easily as a hand into a glove, and the body bank had recognized her presence and revived the body for her. She sat up sharply, drawing breath deep into her lungs, the shock of the body’s senses and sensations almost overwhelming after so long as a merely mental presence. After a while, she pulled herself out of the body bank, and tottered around the abandoned warehouse on unsteady legs. The other tanks were shrouded in dust and cobwebs, and there was