Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

ago against Shub’s Ghost Warriors. Nothing changes, he thought, just a little bitterly. The Ghost Warriors were a very long time ago, but he didn’t feel old. In fact, it seemed to him that he’d never fought better than this.
    He said as much to Investigator Frost, and she agreed, smiling. She stuck close to his side, warning him of dangers he missed.
    Silence and his clone guards reached the palace steps not long after Jesamine’s marvelous song, and he led them carefully through the fallen thralls bodies to the foot of the steps. Nina spotted him, yelled a cheerful greeting, and came bounding down the steps for a quick interview with this new leader of the guards. (Lewis and Jesamine had already refused an interview, and Stuart never had much to say.) But she stopped suddenly, distracted by one of the guards. The steel mask had been torn away during a struggle, and for the first time Nina could see one of the guard’s faces. And for all the distortion, she recognized it immediately as Finn’s. She turned quickly and ripped the mask off another guard.
    “Clones!” said Nina. “Finn’s clones—all of them! Another exclusive!”
    And she did her happy dance, right there in front of a bemused Silence. And then she went bounding back up the steps to spill the news to Stuart. She forgot all about interviewing the solemn-looking man who’d led the guards into the square. She had a feeling she ought to know him, but that could wait. Besides, she thought, glancing back for a moment, he did seem awfully busy chatting with someone who wasn’t there . . .
    Elsewhere in the city, the aliens from the Rookery had joined the fight against the invading thralls. They emerged from unexpected places to rend and kill unsuspecting thralls, and enjoyed themselves immensely. Led by the silver-armored Toch’Kra, they came boiling out of sewer openings and factory outlets, and erupted from boarded-up factories and pollution dumps, catching the thralls by surprise. The aliens tore the possessed humans apart. They didn’t know the bodies were mind-wiped, and they didn’t care. They had grievances to address, and besides, they were hungry. Sometimes they had to be restrained from attacking the clone guards and the fleet’s soldiers. The Rookery people cheered the aliens on, which was something of a new sensation for them.
    The monsters from Shandrakor quickly gravitated towards the aliens, and fought by their side. They felt more at home there, though they politely declined when asked if they’d like to join the feasting. The monsters excelled at fighting the thralls, partly because of their bestial natures, honed by long years of struggle for survival on Shandrakor, but mostly because they had nothing left to lose.
    They had been promised that they could come home, and here they were. It might be called Logres now rather than Golgotha, but this was still the Parade of the Endless, just as they remembered. Even if it had been fancied up a bit since their time. They were home again, and if they had only come back to fight and die, that was fine by them.
    Michel du Bois, one of the few surviving members of Parliament, fought with his back to a wall in a side alley already choked with bodies. Most of the Virimonde warriors he’d come down with were already dead, but he and a dozen others fought on, stubbornly refusing to be dragged down and torn apart like the others. Du Bois chanted the old Deathstalker battle cry, Shandrakor! as he swung his sword with more defiance than skill. Du Bois had always been fiercely loyal to his homeworld, if not always to its most famous Paragon, Lewis; but with the slaughter of Clan Deathstalker by Finn’s creatures, all the people of Virimonde had sworn to become Deathstalkers in their place; and du Bois was no different. He had been among the first to volunteer to come and fight on Logres, even though he was far more a politician than a warrior. He thought he’d done well enough, considering. He’d killed thralls. His only regret was that he should have to die in such a squalid back alley, so far away from the House of Parliament and the Imperial Palace, where he’d spent so much of his life.
    He’d wanted to see them once again, at least, before he died.
    One by one, the men and women around him were dragged down, and killed. Each and every one of them went down fighting to the last. They fought impossible odds, as a Deathstalker should, and not one of them broke and ran. So Michel du