Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

they say Owen has returned. The blessed Deathstalker himself, back to lead us against the Terror, just like all the old legends always said he would. I wish I could believe it . . . but it doesn’t sound very likely, does it?”
    “Hell, no!” Randolph said grimly. “It’s just a dirty Shub trick. The tech they’ve got, they can make people believe anything. Always knew we couldn’t trust those soulless robots. I lost all my grandparents to Shub, back when they were still the official enemies of Humanity. No, if the blessed Owen really had returned, we’d all know about it. He wouldn’t sneak back on some backwater planet; he’d appear on Logres, working miracles. And if he didn’t want Finn on the throne, he’d kick him right off it. No . . . it’s a nice dream, Ariadne, but that’s all it is. Enough chat now. Our brand-new sensors say we can expect the herald to show up pretty soon now. Talk to you later, Heritage . This is Hook, signing off.”
    And after that, there was nothing left but to wait. The comm center became overloaded with pleading messages from civilians in the domed cities on Usher II. No one knew how many people were trapped down there, but it had to be in the millions. There was nothing Heritage or Hook could do for them. They were both under strict instructions to do nothing that might endanger their missions. In the end, Captain Vardalos just stopped listening. Faith and loyalty were all very well, but in the end it always came down to the heavy weight of duty.
    She summoned up an image of the cargo bay on her private viewscreen. The only thing in the cavernous hold was the alien superweapon, and its foul poisonous presence seemed to fill the steel chamber. The weapon had been reverse engineered from seized alien technology, and it looked it. If the device did everything the human scientists claimed it would, it should be able to transform one of Usher II’s binary suns into a supernova, and then channel all the terrible energies into a single vicious strike against the herald. Nothing material should be able to survive that; not even something that incubated in suns. And without the herald to prepare its targets, the Terror might not be able to feed . . .
    Vardalos didn’t trust the weapon. She didn’t trust it to do what it was supposed to do, and she didn’t trust it not to have some nasty alien surprises up its sleeve. Just looking at it made her feel uneasy. She scowled at the thing in her cargo bay, squatting on the steel floor like a malignant toad. It was big and blocky, but apart from that no one could be sure of its shape or nature. Its edges were blurred, as though it had too many angles for human eyes to focus on. No one liked to be near it. It upset people. The technicians who brought it on board wore armored hard suits, so they wouldn’t have to actually touch it. Vardalos would be glad when she could dump the horrid thing, and be rid of it. But until then, she had her orders.
    And perhaps it would take an alien-derived horror to stop the Terror.

    Unknown to either the Heritage or the Hook , a third starship was studying Usher II from a distance, and waiting for the Terror to arrive. Donal Corcoran, aboard the Jeremiah , had come a long way to satisfy his need for vengeance. The madman in his mad ship, undetected by the Imperial craft because both he and the Jeremiah had become too different, too other , to show up on even the strongest sensors. Corcoran and his ship had witnessed the first appearance of the Terror, at the planet Iona, and the experience had changed them both forever. Corcoran had escaped from a high security asylum on Logres to be here, at Usher II, because when the Terror disappeared after destroying Iona, it took part of his mind with it. Corcoran was linked to horror, and always would be. He followed that mental link to Usher II and now he waited for a chance to hurt the Terror, punish it, destroy it for what it had done to him.
    Corcoran roamed restlessly through the twisting corridors of his insane ship, a gaunt and haggard man, burning with a terrible energy that drove him on even as it used him up. He did not eat and he did not rest and he did not sleep, though sometimes he thought he dreamed. He had lost confidence in all the everyday certainties of reality, which meant he could sometimes walk through it, and even manipulate parts of it to serve his will. He had conversations with people he was pretty sure weren’t really there, and