“No,” said David finally. “No. I won’t stand for this.”
“We’d better get out of here,” said Kit. “There’s no telling how close the nearest Imperial forces are.”
“I am the Lord of this planet, and I will not allow this.” David glared at the blazing hell on the viewscreen, his hands clenched into fists. “This isn’t war. This is inhuman. There’s no way Lionstone’s going to get away with this. This is my world and my people and I will not stand for this!”
“There’s nothing you can do,” said Kit. He shut down the viewscreen, and David turned his glare on him. Kit met his gaze calmly. “You’ve been outlawed, David. You no longer have any followers or power base, and even your own Standing may be compromised. You can’t fight, and surrender isn’t an option, so that just leaves flight.”
David shook his head stubbornly. “If I can get to the Standing, there’s still a chance I can contact the Company of Lords. Show them what’s happening here, what Lionstone’s doing to one of their own. If this could happen here, no Lord’s holdings would be safe anymore.”
“They won’t interfere,” said Kit. “No one objected to Owen’s outlawing, remember? While the Empress has the backing of the armed forces and the war machines, no Lord’s going to risk making a stand against her.”
“Then I’ll use the Standing’s comm station to broadcast what’s happening here on an open channel, so everyone in the Empire can see what’s being done in the Empress’s name.”
“Your Standing is most probably in the Steward’s hands now,” Kit said patiently.
“Then we’ll take it back from him,” said David.
Kit took David by the shoulders so he could stare into his friend’s eyes. “David, let it go. They’re just peasants. They’re nothing to do with us. Virimonde is a lost cause. It was the moment Lionstone decided to send in the troops and the war machines. We can’t fight this. All we can do is cut and run and hope to save our own skins.”
“I won’t abandon my people,” David said flatly.
“They’re just peasants!”
“What about Alice and me?” said Jenny, from the other side of the bar.
“What about you?” said Kit.
“You bastard,” said Jenny. “You’d just run off and abandon us, wouldn’t you?”
“No one’s abandoning anyone,” said David. “Our flyer’s still in the stable out back. It can carry four of us. There’s got to be some organized resistance, somewhere. You and Alice can connect us with the nearest rebel cells, and together we can take back the Standing. Stevie Blue!”
The two clones looked back from the doorway. “Yeah?”
“We are leaving; you want a lift?”
“I don’t think so,” said Stevie One. “Once you’re safely on your way, our responsibility to you is over. We’ll head for the nearest city still standing, organize resistance, and generally make trouble wherever it’ll do the most damage.”
“Right,” said Stevie Three, and held up a fist. Blue flames crackled menacingly around it.
“Then it’s time to go,” said David. He looked around him, as though seeing the tavern bar for the first time. “I should have listened to Owen. He tried to warm me. Damn, I wish I’d had a few more hours’ sleep. The shock’s driven the booze out of my head, but I feel like shit.” He stopped, and looked at Kit for a long moment. “Kit, you don’t have to come with us. You haven’t been outlawed, so presumably they don’t know about your rebel links, or don’t care. You could cut us loose and make off on your own . . .”
“No I couldn’t,” said Kit calmly. “You’re my friend. And if you’re determined to fight for a lost cause for no good reason that I can see, then I’ll fight it with you. I am Kid Death, the smiling killer, and I will not desert my friend in his hour of need.”
“You’re a good sort, Kit,” said David, smiling. “Weird as hell and spooky with it, but you’ll do.” He grinned suddenly. “What the hell; I was getting bored with peace and quiet anyway.”
“Damn right,” said Kit. “The holiday’s over, time to get back to work. We were never meant to be gentlemen of leisure.”
They turned to look at the two girls. Alice had stopped crying. Her mouth kept trying to tremble, but she was back in control.
“We’re sticking with you,” she said flatly. “This is our world, too. We have a right to defend it.”
“Of course you do,” said David. “And maybe on the way we’ll find time for some personal revenge. Now let’s go.”
They headed for the back door together, waving briefly to the Stevie Blues. Jenny glared at Kit. “You slow us down, SummerIsle, and we’ll dump you to fend for yourself. Got it?”
Kit smiled at her. “I always knew you were a woman after my own heart.”
In his private command center on the planet’s surface, inside a great slow-moving armored vehicle well away from the main fighting, Valentine Wolfe sat at his ease in a comfortable chair and watched death and destruction and bloody butchery on the many monitor screens around him, and was content. All Empire commands and machine instructions were routed through his systems, allowing him overall awareness of the invasion as well as individual control of his war units. He was contained inside a solid steel isolation tank, surrounded by control systems, lit by the glowing monitor screens. The ten-foot cube packed with tech would have been a claustrophobe’s nightmare, but it didn’t bother Valentine. Very little did, these days.
Various drugs were racing through his veins, fighting for control of his mind and body, but his will held them all in check. Before coming to Virimonde, he’d finally yielded to temptation and taken the esper drug, and his dark mind had blossomed like a poisoned flower. He now had direct control of his own autonomic systems, balancing one chemical with another, so that he lived on the highest curl of a continuous wave. And if the universe and its people seemed a little less than real, well, they always had, to him. It was only a matter of degree. He could think faster, see farther, and plan in more detail than ever before, even as his emotions thundered within him, great storms of feeling that crashed against the unyielding rocks of his self-control. Valentine Wolfe was out of his mind morning, noon, and night now, and he loved it. His brain chemistry was altered beyond recovery, and he couldn’t have been happier.
People and events had become transparent to his supercharged insight, merely things and information to be manipulated to his best advantage. He could become Emperor, if he chose, but he wasn’t sure if he could be bothered. For all his chemical highs, he was still dedicated to the search for the ultimate drug, the ultimate thrill and wonder. He wasn’t sure what that was, or where he might find it, only that it was out there, and he hadn’t found it yet. There was something still beyond his grasp, some further step to take; he could sense it. And he wanted it. To seize it and make it his, he would sacrifice every living thing in the Empire.
In the meantime, he occupied himself with the destruction of Virimonde. As a distraction, it had its pleasing moments. He watched his war machines destroy whole towns and slaughter their populations, and smiled quietly to himself, his wide crimson mouth like a wound in the skull white of his face. He took an uncomplicated delight in the endless death and destruction, savoring it as a banquet of many courses. He was becoming a monster, and he knew it. He gloried in it.
The machines moved to his order, directed by his will. His continuing alliance with the rogue AIs of Shub had brought him high tech advanced far beyond anything the Empire had. Their latest gift had been a computer system that enabled him to sink his mind into the metal consciousness of the war machines, and experience everything they did. He could become the war wagons and the combat androids, live in their steel heads, direct them as he would his own body. He could see through their sensors a world of perceptions far beyond the limited range of his human senses. He could plow through walls, fly high over buildings, and walk on metal feet through crowds of attacking humans and strike them down with metal fists. No one else could
have done it, but Valentine’s mind had been so altered by drugs and esp and Shub tech that it was no longer merely human. He’d been careful to hide that from Lionstone. She thought anyone would be able to control the war machines as he did once they’d mastered the new system. He let her think that, for the moment. It was useful for him to have sole control over something she wanted. In the meantime, her invasion of Virimonde gave him the chance to show off what he and his tech could do. And the slaughter and the suffering and the destruction were so delightfully diverting. Valentine had an absolute fear of boredom, and he’d exhausted so many of the usual sins and vices.
Even as his mind moved in the machines, singly and en masse, he was still plotting his next move. He’d acquired the esper drug, through a combination of bribes and blackmail, from the same scientists who used to supply Dram. And since the man currently known as Dram wasn’t taking the endlessly addictive esper drug from them, it was clear that whoever or whatever he was, he wasn’t the original Dram. He wasn’t a Fury; Shub had confirmed that, and they had no reason to lie to him. That left a clone, or an alien impostor, either of which raised fascinating possibilities. For the moment, Valentine kept this information to himself. Knowledge is power. He might, at some later date, use this knowledge to control the new Dram, or destroy him. It all depended on how he might feel at the time. Valentine believed in indulging his impulses.
That thought widened his smile as he looked over at the end result of his last impulse. On a stand, in a glass jar festooned with wires, was ail that remained of the distinguished scientist Lionstone had insisted be allowed to observe and assist Valentine in his use of the war machines. Valentine hadn’t been fooled for a moment. He knew a spy when he saw one. So he’d taken steps to ensure that while Professor Ignatious Wax would still be able to observe all that happened, he would be in no position to interfere. To be exact, Valentine had had the man decapitated, and now kept the severed head in a glass jar.
It was wired directly into the command center’s comm station, so that it could see all that was going on. It had screamed a lot to begin with, but Valentine just turned off the jar’s sound, till it stopped. Mostly it just watched the monitors and sulked now. No doubt Lionstone would have something boring to say about this when she found out, but Valentine was certain he’d be able to talk his way out of any trouble. He always did. And in the meantime, the head made a decorative addition to his command center. He rather enjoyed the way the long white hair and moustaches floated in the jar’s preservative fluids, and the way the eyes bulged when it got angry. Besides, Wax had designed most of the war machines Valentine was currently controlling, so there was always the slim chance Wax’s knowledge might prove useful.
“How are you doing, Professor?” Valentine said politely. “Anything I can do for you? Rerun some of the nastier death footage, perhaps?”
“I take no pleasure in such things,” Wax’s head said stiffly, through the jar’s speaker. “I am not like you. My interest lies only in the performance of my creations.”
“I would never have thought of you as squeamish, Professor,” said Valentine. “Not after all the thousands of test animals you maimed and mutilated and sent to the animal hereafter while working out the bugs in your delightful machines. Think of the unfortunate rebels here as particularly unlucky lab rats.”
“I don’t care about them one way or the other,” said Wax. “I am completely indifferent to their fate. I merely require to know how my creations are progressing.”
“They’re not your machines, Professor. Not any longer. The tech links I provided finally made your machines practical in the field, so the Empress gave them over into my care. Which is why I am in charge, and you are in a jar. Perhaps you’d care to monitor the machines through my tech links?”
“You know very well I can’t understand them! I don’t think anyone does, but you. Which is in itself rather strange, isn’t it, Wolfe? Neither you nor the laboratories you fund has ever produced anything like this before. Which means you must have had help. Outside help. I wonder from whom, eh, Wolfe? Could it be you have to keep your confederates’ identity secret, because you know the Empress wouldn’t approve? Who have you been making deals with, Wolfe?”
“You are entering dangerous waters, Professor,” Valentine said easily. “I advise you to turn back now, while you still can.”
“Or what? You’ll cut my head off and stick it in a jar?”
“There are worse things that could happen to you,” said Valentine. “Trust me on this.”
The head in the jar muttered to itself, then fell silent. It was sulking again. Valentine smiled, and sank back into the mental link with the war machines. In a moment, he was a combat android stamping across a plowed field, the weight of his great steel frame driving his metal feet deep into the rutted earth. He reached out with his mind, and was a dozen metal men, and then a hundred, stamping in unison across the wide field. Their feet rose and fell in perfect step, a hundred robots in the shape of men, with but one purpose and one intent, moving as one.
They marched over the horizon and into a town. Rebels came out to face them, fighting with farm implements and the occasional projectile weapon. Blades and bullets rebounded harmlessly from the metal men, and the robots laid their hands upon the rebels, tearing them limb from limb, breaking their heads and necks with lashing metal flails, and tearing open their guts with jagged metal hooks. It was inevitable that they would take some damage, but as long as a spark of energy remained in their systems they pressed on, marching, limping or crawling on their bellies, never stopping. Men and women and children died screaming under metal hands, and Valentine was there.
He’d wondered why the rouge AIs of Shub had insisted on supplying him with this particular gift, but now he thought he knew why. It was their way of showing him what it was like to be living metal, to be encompassed by the certainty of steel and tech, to be so much more than merely human, free from the limits of flesh. Valentine’s scarlet smile stretched from ear to ear, a new satisfaction glowing in his mascaraed, fever-bright eyes. He spread himself through the entire metal army, growing larger and larger, blossoming through every system at once, his artificially boosted, drug-expanded mind living inside every war machine on Virimonde, and loving every minute of it.
The man who was now the Lord High Dram led his troops howling through the blazing streets of a small town. Buildings burned to every side, thick black smoke billowing up into the early-morning sky. The heat from every side made Dram’s exposed face and hands smart, and hot cinders floated on the air. His men spread out, plunging down every side turning and alleyway, searching out rebels and putting them to the sword. Suddenly his men began falling, as snipers opened fire from the upper story of a building up ahead. Dram roared orders, and a dozen disrupters opened fire at once, the joined energy blasts blowing the whole upper floor of the building apart in a shower of rubble and reddish clouds of pulverized bricks. Dram had his men toss a few concussion grenades into the lower floor, just in case, and then they moved on. Dram strode at the head of his troops, gun in one hand, sword in the other. Blood dripped steadily from the sword. There were screams and shouts and explosions all around, and Dram grinned so widely his cheeks ached. This was what he had been born, had been constructed and chosen, to do, and he loved every minute of it.
He shouldn’t really have been planetside at all. He should have stayed safely in orbit, setting overall policy and allowing General Beckett to take care of the practical side of things. Dram had started out with good intentions, but they hadn’t lasted long once the fighting really got under way. He’d watched it all on the Elegance‘s bridge monitors, calling constantly for more information, his blood boiling with the thrill of battle. At first he tried to use his men efficiently, killing only those who needed to be killed, and keeping destruction of towns and cities to a necessary minimum. But all that stopped when the rebel population suddenly produced guns and weapons from nowhere and began fighting back. Dram watched hi
s men die, and the rebels defying him, and a fury roared through him, that these peasants dared to stand against him. He’d taken it easy on them, and this was his reward. Dram watched his men die, and knew he needed to be down there with them, in the thick of it all, leading them to victory while personally cutting down those who dared defy him. He needed to smell the blood and death, feel his sword sinking into flesh and jarring on bone. And so he overrode Beckett’s advice and warnings, and went down into Hell on the next available pinnace.
And he loved it. He swung his sword with an arm that never tired, and no one could stand against him. He was the Warrior Prime, the Widowmaker, and he was everything the original had been and more. He stayed at the head of his troops, taking out rebel strongholds with gun and grenades, leading his men from one glorious victory to another. Buildings blazed around him, the rebels’ dead lay everywhere, and the survivors ran before him, and he’d never felt so alive in his entire short life. His heart hammered in his chest, his breathing was deep and harsh, and he felt like he Could go on fighting forever and a day, and never ask for anything else. From time to time it occurred to him that he wasn’t fighting some faceless enemy, that the people he killed had faces and lives and histories of their own, and parents and children to mourn them, but even then he didn’t care. They had defied him and his Empress and the way things were, and there was only one answer for that. If they had surrendered, he would have spared them. He was sure he would. They would have had to stand trial, and many would have been executed anyway, but all this slaughter and destruction lay at their door, not his. And so he walked up and down in the narrow cobbled streets, killing people for all the right reasons and perhaps a few wrong ones, and didn’t give a damn. He was having a good time.
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