Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

head right next to his ancestor’s. The floating body rose and fell slightly, as though moved by unseen, unknown tides.
    “Owen, please wake up. We need you here. There are decisions that have to be made, and we can’t do anything without you. Owen? Can you hear me? Dammit, Owen, I didn’t bring you back from the bloody dead just so you could hide from your responsibilities like this! You’re a Deathstalker, and a legend, and we need you!”
    Not a flicker of response moved on Owen’s face. Jesamine pulled Lewis back out of the way, stuck her mouth right next to Owen’s ear, and sang her loudest, most piercing note right into it. She put all her opera training and lung capacity into that note, and everyone else present except the robots winced and put their hands to their ears, but Owen didn’t so much as twitch. Jesamine stood up, breathing hard, and then slapped Owen round the head, at least partly out of pique. Lewis dragged her away before the robots did it, shielding her body with his own, just in case there was a defensive reaction from Owen. Brett was already hiding behind Rose. But nothing happened, apart from Jesamine loudly announcing that she’d hurt her hand.
    Brett peered out from behind Rose, and tried his esp power of compulsion on Owen. He frowned hard, trying to force Owen to wake up, vaguely hoping that his short time in the Maze might have increased his power. Instead, the mental probe just bounced right back at him, knocking him off his feet. He sat down hard, crying out as much in shock as pain. Lewis looked at him suspiciously.
    “Brett, did you just do something stupid?”
    “Leave him alone,” Rose said immediately, hauling Brett back onto his feet with effortless grace. “At least he’s trying.”
    “Yes,” said Jesamine. “I’ve always found Brett very trying.”
    Lewis gave Brett his best stern look. “Using an esp probe on a Maze survivor is like poking a Grendel with a stick and saying bad things about its mother. Bad news for the idiot that does it, and probably everyone else around him as well. Maybe you should go back to the surface, Brett.”
    “Oh, no, you’re not shutting me out of this!” Brett said instantly. “There’s safety in numbers, even if it only gives you a better choice of who to stick in front of you as a target. Besides, there’s serious money to be made out of the return of Owen Deathstalker, if we can just wake him up, and I’m not being cheated out of my share! I’m not going, and you can’t make me!”
    “Brett, even I could make you,” said Jesamine.
    Brett folded his arms and leaned back against Rose, looking smug. “Want to bet, blondie?”
    Rose let her hand rest on the hilt of her sword. Lewis’s hand went to his sword, and it was all about to turn nasty when Silence decided he’d had enough. He concentrated, pulling his old power up through the back brain, the mid-brain, and out into the front of his thoughts, and suddenly his presence lashed out to fill the steel corridor. The sheer force of it sent everyone staggering backward, even the robots. In a moment they were all pressed back against the nearest wall, held there by the sheer pressure of his will, pinned helplessly. Only Owen seemed unaffected, floating untouched and unmoved. Silence glared around him.
    “When I talk, you listen. I was a captain in Lionstone’s navy. I survived the original Rebellion. I guarded Humanity for two hundred years. I went though the Madness Maze twice . I could have been as powerful as the others, but I was never interested in that kind of power. It always seemed more important to me to hang on to my . . . humanity. So, no more squabbling, and sensible suggestions only. Or I’ll forget I’m supposed to be one of the good guys.”
    He relaxed his thoughts, and everyone dropped back onto the floor again. They all looked at him with varying amounts of awe and respect. They’d forgotten, in the presence of Owen Deathstalker, that Captain John Silence had been a legend too.
    After that, no one else seemed to have anything to say, so they all just stood there and watched Owen float, waiting for something to happen.
    He looks so . . . ordinary, just sleeping, thought Lewis. Even if he is doing it in midair. And we need him to be extraordinary. Nothing less will do, to stop Finn Durandal and the Terror. What if I’ve made a terrible mistake, and brought back only a man, not a legend?
    Jesamine was also thinking about mistakes. For once, Brett