Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

both sides retreated to lick their psychic wounds, and prepare for future battles. Both the ELF leaders and the uber-espers were determined to stand alone now, and follow their own destiny. They didn’t need Finn anymore. They would rule Humanity on their own terms, and to hell with all alliances of convenience.

    Finn crushed the uprisings, eventually. It cost him time and money and manpower, far more than he could afford, but he had no choice. He had to maintain control. Planet by planet, city by city, the rebellions were stamped out with gun and steel, and a slow sullen silence fell across the Empire, every bit of it now under strict martial law. Rebel bodies hung from lampposts in their hundreds, in every city, and heavily armed and armored troops walked the city streets, looking nervously over their shoulders.
    The Rookery was strictly off-limits. No one went in, and no one came out.
    Finn was more worried about the loss of his ELF allies. None of them would talk to him anymore, and all his contacts seemed to have disappeared underground. He’d relied upon their support for too long; his spy organizations were lost without their telepathically gained intelligence. Finn told Joseph Wallace that production of esp-blockers was now to have priority over everything else, but couldn’t explain why. Unfortunately, it turned out you couldn’t manufacture esp-blockers without the required esper brain tissues, and the cloning of esper tissues had always had a high failure rate. So mass production was going to be a slow, time-consuming process. (Joseph delivered that message over the comm, from a safe distance. He still didn’t entirely trust Finn’s temper.)
    The Emperor had other problems too. He went to see Elijah du Katt, in his new laboratory set within the palace. (Finn had decided to keep his remaining allies close at hand, wherever possible.) There was only one du Katt these days. The Elijahs had tried to assemble their own power base and a new clone underground, and Finn couldn’t have that, so he personally shot all the Elijah du Katts except one. He neither knew nor cared whether the remaining du Katt was the original or not. It didn’t really matter.
    Ostensibly Finn was visiting du Katt to discuss the problems of cloning esper brain tissues, but as always Finn had an ulterior motive. The recent uprisings had demonstrated very clearly that he had a shortage of manpower, especially now that he didn’t have the thralls to back him up any longer. He needed soldiers—armed men who would do what they were told without question. And he didn’t have the time to find and train and indoctrinate them. So, the obvious answer was an army of clones. To produce such an army would require a huge protein base, but luckily there was no shortage of dead bodies lying around, just waiting to be put to good use. And this new army would be programmed to know no fear, and absolutely no independence. They wouldn’t turn and run, like those so-called zealots he’d sent into the Rookery. Finn’s blood still boiled at the thought of his men running from a bunch of outcasts and cheap grifters. He would have cheerfully called in his fleet and scorched the whole area from orbit, but there was no way of doing that without taking out the whole of the Parade of the Endless. He was still thinking about it, though.
    Finn expounded his plans for a new clone army at some length to the sole remaining and somewhat subdued du Katt. He strode up and down between the shining brand-new equipment, his ideas growing more extravagant by the moment. Du Katt just sat there, shaking his head slowly, until Finn told him to stop it. Du Katt wrung his hands together in front of him to stop them from shaking.
    “To produce the number of clones you require, on the time scale you propose, presents us with . . . certain difficulties, that no amount of tech or funding will overcome. Your Majesty, the end product will almost certainly be . . . damaged goods.”
    “Be specific,” said Finn, fiddling with a nearby piece of delicate and expensive equipment, just to watch du Katt flinch and twitch.
    “Well, Your Majesty, the end product will almost certainly have physical defects, including but not limited to, a certain amount of brain damage.”
    “Sounds like a plan to me,” said Finn. “Soldiers too stupid to rebel, and too dumb to do anything but follow orders. I can live with that. I’ll take two million, to begin with. And use the cell samples