Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

cause, and an army, and you can be a part of that. Revenge . . . can soothe many an old hurt.”
    The alien studied him for a long moment with its unreadable silver face, and then it turned away to talk with the others, in the pool and out. The untranslated barks and squeals of alien speech filled the steamy air. Eventually Toch’Kra turned back to face the humans.
    “Even if we were willing to fight, what help could we be, when most of us couldn’t survive in your environment?”
    Douglas nodded thoughtfully, but inside he was grinning broadly. He had them, even if they didn’t know it yet. They’d stopped asking why, and moved on to how. “There is much you can do. There are many places you can go that humans cannot. Service tunnels, sewer access points, waste disposal outlets, and all the other places humans can’t survive without heavy tech support. And there are people here in the Rookery who can build you whatever tech support you need, to move around freely. You supply the plans, they’ll supply the tech. There are people here who can build anything, especially if it’s illegal. So, what do you say? Are you with us?”
    “There are many species here,” said Toch’Kra. “We do not all share the same goals, ways, or even the same concepts. Some of us are as alien to each other as we are to you. But we will discuss the matter. Many of us understand, or have learned, the need for revenge. I think, when the discussion is over . . . we will follow you, King Douglas.”
    There wasn’t really much left to say after that, so Douglas bowed courteously to Toch’Kra, and then to the pool, and led his people back out of the baths. Behind them rose the sound of loud debate, in a dozen inhuman languages. Nina shuddered briefly.
    “I swear, I will never eat seafood again.”

    The great esper Diana Vertue, once known as Jenny Psycho, once dead but now alive again, strode through the streets of the Parade of the Endless as though she owned them, heading for the Rookery. She was broadcasting a powerful telepathic aversion meme, so that everyone else looked everywhere except at her. She passed a gaggle of Church Militant peacekeepers with malice in their eyes, bored and looking for trouble, and Diana was tempted to do something hilariously appalling to them, but decided reluctantly not to. She didn’t want to attract attention. Not yet, anyway. The city wasn’t how she remembered it at all, and she didn’t care for the feel of the streets. There was an overlying pall of gloom, fear, pain, and repression, leaking from a million untutored minds, and yet there was more to it than that.
    Diana stopped by the Victory Gardens, to stand before the statues and graves of Jack Random and Ruby Journey. The statues didn’t look much like the people she remembered, but she was used to that. The few representations she’d seen of herself had been nothing short of laughable. She’d never had that big a bust in her life. She sighed quietly, remembering. It had been a long time since she and Jack and Ruby had boarded the old Deathstalker Standing, the ancient stone castle that was also a starship, to go into one last desperate battle against the armies of Shub, and then the massed forces of the Recreated. And a long, long time since she’d found them lying together, stone-cold dead on the cold stone floor, side by side as they had been in life. Forensic evidence suggested they’d murdered each other, but Diana Vertue suppressed that. The people didn’t need to know everything about their heroes.
    She smiled briefly. She’d never thought she’d miss the blustering old rogue and the coldhearted bounty hunter, but they had both done amazing things in their time. People these days seemed . . . smaller, somehow. Less colorful. She concentrated, and a rain of rose petals fell silently upon the statues. And then she looked round sharply as her open mind seemed to catch an echo of an old familiar presence, a sense of power upon the air, not long ago at all.
    “Owen?” she said, wonderingly.
    But of course there was no reply. Owen Deathstalker had been dead and gone these past two hundred years, and the Empire was a lesser place because of it. She’d always admired the Deathstalker, with his honor and his courage and his dry, sardonic wit. She never told him that, of course. She didn’t want him to get bigheaded. But after he was gone, she wished . . . she wished she could have just sat down with him, once, and talked. She