Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

Chosen One, the Defender of Humanity, their day and their night. And they were his attack dogs.
    There were thousands of them, armed to the teeth, their heads boiling with battle drugs and virulent propaganda. They were the righteous, and mercy and compassion and all such weaknesses were not in them. They gathered at the boundaries of the Rookery and then marched in by all the entryways at once, singing their awful hymns, and killing everyone they saw. They shot down men, women, and children, and cut down those who didn’t run away fast enough. They set fires and planted explosives in buildings. Their lord had said that not one stone should remain standing upon another, and not one heathen soul should be left alive to see the coming day. They did not care, or falter. They were doing God’s work, and it felt fine, so fine.
    Men, women, and children lay dead and dying in the streets, and the Church Militant soldiers marched right over them. Fires burned brightly against the dark, and explosions sounded in the night like the heavy footfalls of an avenging God. Anywhere else in the city there would have been nothing but panic, and people running blindly, but this was the Rookery, and the people here were made of harder stuff. Word passed quickly of the invasion, and all too soon the Church Militant advance ground to a halt in the face of implacable opposition. Men, women, and children came running from all directions to block the invaders’ way, all of them armed with some kind of weapon. More people gathered on the roofs, to rain down debris on the enemy. There were snipers with energy guns at the higher windows, and fast-footed youths darted out of alleyways with improvised grenades.
    In the Rookery it was truly said: Any man against his neighbor, but every man against the outsider.
    Douglas, Stuart, and Nina worked tirelessly through the endless hours of the morning, organizing the rebel forces, sending people to fight where they were most needed. Diana Vertue and the Psycho Sluts struck the armed forces again and again, darting in and out in vicious hit-and-run tactics, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Even some of the aliens emerged onto the streets, for a chance to strike back at their persecutors.
    The Rookery rose up, combined at last into a single great force with a single aim. The Emperor had made himself their enemy, a threat to their homes and their lives, and they would never rest again till they had brought him down. The people surged through the streets, throwing themselves at the invaders in wave after wave, howling a hundred different battle cries in a single enraged voice. The end result of generations of people who had had to fight for everything in their lives. Guns blazed and swords flashed, and the Church Militant soldiers fell in their dozens, and then in their hundreds, and finally in their thousands. The people of the Rookery came from everywhere at once, to drag the fanatics down by sheer force of numbers. The Rookery rose up, savage and unrelenting, and all in a moment the invasion became a rout. The Church Militant abandoned their weapons, their orders, and their faith in Finn and themselves, and in ragged groups they ran for the Rookery boundaries. Of the hundreds of thousands of proud and arrogant zealots who’d marched into the Rookery, only a few hundred made it out alive.
    Nina Malapert got a lot of it on film, and broadcast every bit of it on her rogue news site, with the tech team using all their ingenuity to keep it on the air for as long as possible. All over Logres, and on worlds across the Empire, people watched as Finn’s authority was challenged, and thrown back in his face. They saw the blood and the bodies, and whole families slaughtered by the Church Militant troops, and then they watched as Douglas Campbell and Stuart Lennox fought back to back against impossible odds, and never had those two looked more like heroes.
    Finn’s censors shut down the broadcast, eventually, and there was nothing left but blank screens, all across the Empire.
    In the Rookery, the people gathered up their dead, treated the wounded as best they could, and put out the fires. They didn’t feel much like celebrating. But at least now there was no doubt over whose side they were on. They stopped pursuing the troops at the boundaries only because Douglas sent messages to call them back. He knew they weren’t ready to go head-to-head with Finn’s armies. Not yet. Hot tempers subsided