Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

what makes you what you are? So . . . nothing else is left to us, but to leave. Perhaps we will find a safe place further on . . . in the next galaxy.”
    Owen tried to comprehend lives lived across such a vast expanse of time and space, and couldn’t, even after his own travels through time. He found it comforting, that he still had some human limitations. Unlike the thing that had once been Hazel d’Ark. A sudden rush of pity moved him, sorrow for the poor butterfly people crushed beneath the heel of something that could never appreciate the wonders of what it destroyed.
    “So,” Owen said to Lucifer, almost angrily. “You’re just going to up and leave? Fly away and abandon Humanity to their fate?”
    “What else can we do?” said Lucifer.
    Owen was just getting the beginnings of an idea, when armed men burst suddenly out of the tunnel entrance and into the cavern. They wore improvised body armor over gaudy costumes, and opened fire the moment they saw the Light People hanging from the ceiling. They were carrying projectile weapons, and fired recklessly in every direction. Hellen screamed New Frontier! While Owen just stood and gaped for a moment, thrown off balance by the rapid fire. A ricocheting round whistled past his head, and he snapped out of his daze. He pushed Hellen up against the nearest wall, and made her crouch down, covering her body with his own. The Illuminati scattered to avoid the raking fire, plunging back and forth across the cavern at dizzying speeds. The newcomers fired their guns endlessly, but didn’t seem able to hit anything. The Light People swooped and soared, and guns turned to follow them. The noise of massed gunfire in such a confined space was deafening, and smoke rolled thickly on the air, swept this way and that by the beating of vast wings. Hellen sobbed loudly, and clutched at Owen like a child.
    “What the hell is going on?” he yelled in her ear, but he had to shake her hard before she could talk to him coherently.
    “New Frontier enforcers,” she gasped, tears rolling down her face. “They hate the Light People, for making people afraid to go out to the stars. They’ve threatened to kill them all, to prove the superiority of the human spirit. They’re all supposed to have been arrested!”
    “Looks like your peacekeepers missed a few,” Owen growled.
    The fanatics raked their guns back and forth, trying to follow the sweeping and dodging Illuminati, still not managing to hit anything. But given the sheer number of bullets, and the enclosed space, it was clearly only a matter of time. The Light People couldn’t keep dodging forever.
    Owen decided it was time he got involved. He put his mouth next to Hellen’s ear.
    “You stay put. I’ll take care of the scumbags.”
    He rose up and started towards the New Frontier enforcers. They saw him coming, and some trained their guns on him. Owen smiled coldly, and his power snarled and crackled on the air around him. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly away from his force shield. All the other guns trained on him, and Owen slapped the fanatics down with a single thought. They hit the ground hard, dropping their weapons. It was suddenly very quiet in the great cavern, the last echoes of gunfire fading quickly away. The Light People clustered on the ceiling again, apart from Lucifer, who settled on the ground beside Owen, and looked at him searchingly. He was about to say something, when Hellen came running forward to embrace him. And one of the fanatics on the floor pulled a gun from a hidden holster, and shot at Lucifer. The bullet punched through the wing he had wrapped around Hellen, and killed her instantly. She slipped bonelessly out of Lucifer’s grasp, as he stood, shocked. Owen howled with fury and gestured sharply at the fanatic. His head exploded in a shower of blood and bone, and the other fanatics cried out in horror until Owen yelled at them to shut up.
    He knelt beside Hellen to check, but he knew she was dead. Lucifer stood beside him.
    “She is gone.”
    “Yes.” Owen rose up from her side, and turned to look at Lucifer. “How’s your wing?”
    “It will heal.”
    “Why didn’t you use your powers to protect her?”
    “We do not interfere. It is our way. Our principle.”
    “She was your friend!”
    “Yes. She was. You killed that man, Owen.”
    “I should kill all of them. They would have killed all of you.”
    “We would rather all die, than kill another.” Lucifer turned his back on Owen,