Deathstalker Return (38 page)

“Ah,” said Lewis. “So we have your permission to land now, do we? How very kind. Now get your arse out of my pilot’s seat.”

Brett quickly made way for Lewis, who settled into the pilot’s chair and glowered at the comm panels before him.

“Oz, why didn’t you tell me about the hidden menu?”

“Sorry, Lewis,” said the ship’s AI. “The original captain set things up so the hidden menu could be accessed only via the correct code words. I wasn’t even able to mention it until now. You’re really very talented with computers, Brett Random.”

The con man leaned casually against the port bulkhead and preened ostentatiously. “I have magic fingers. There isn’t a computer going that I can’t tickle into giving up its secrets. I could make the AIs of Shub giggle and blush like schoolgirls.”

“Boasting is very unattractive,” observed Jesamine.

“Hey, stick to what you’re best at, that’s what I always say.” Brett glanced at the long curve of the planet Shandrakor on the bridge viewscreen. “You know, Deathstalker, we are getting awfully close to the planet. Are you positive there’s no quarantine here? No starcruisers on patrol, no orbiting minefields?”

“For the tenth time, Brett, we’re all alone up here,” said Lewis. “This ship’s sensors could hear a mouse fart from high orbit. And I can tell you for a fact that there’s never been any official quarantine around Shandrakor, for the simple reason that this planet doesn’t have a single damned thing that anyone wants. Or at least, nothing worth the trouble of fighting the jungle, the climate, the monsters and all the other kinds of sudden death from unexpected directions that this planet specializes in. Someone did try running safari parties here, for really jaded big-game hunters, but the company went bust after no one came back from their first ten expeditions. There was a joke going around that the only thing that did come back was a note from the monsters, saying
Send more hunters.
”

“I’m starting not to feel safe anymore,” Brett said warningly.

“But the old Deathstalker Standing definitely is here?” said Saturday. “The great castle of your ancestors?”

“Oh, yes,” said Lewis. “This is where Jenny Psycho crash-landed it, after it was pretty much blown apart in the last great battle against Shub and the Recreated. The exact coordinates of where it went down were officially suppressed, but my family secretly preserved them as part of our heritage. I can take us right there.”

Brett sniffed loudly. “I still say it takes some swallowing. A stone castle with its own stardrive—I mean, how likely is that?”

“The original Standing dates from the days of the First Empire,” said Lewis. “They did things differently then, with knowledge and tech we can only dream of.”

“You know, I hate to agree with Brett, on principle,” said Jesamine. “But it does seem awfully strange to me that there’s absolutely no Imperial presence here. Not even a spy satellite. I mean, Finn must know about the Standing. Surely he’d have expected us to turn up here at some point?”

“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” said Lewis. “Maybe he’s got problems at home, by now. We can’t be the only people opposing him. Can we?”

“I’m afraid I’m still completely cut off from the Empire,” said Oz. “I have to run silent, to maintain full stealth capabilities. I have no information on what is happening elsewhere.”

“Hell,” said Brett. “Maybe some kind soul has assassinated Finn bloody Durandal in our absence, and the whole nasty business is over. We could go home!”

“No,” said Rose flatly, from her corner. “The Durandal wouldn’t die that easily. And even if he were gone, Pure Humanity and the Church Militant would still go on. It is their time. The Empire is sick, and all the poisons must leak out.”

“Don’t you all just cringe, every time she opens her mouth?” said Jesamine.

Lewis looked at the viewscreen to avoid having to answer. “Jenny Psycho was very insistent we come here, to Shandrakor. Maybe she got here first, and . . . did some tidying up. Clearing the way for us. She was one of the most powerful uber-espers ever, back when she was alive.”

“Death didn’t seem to have slowed her down any,” Jesamine admitted. “But what could the Standing hold, that we could need so badly?”

“Guns,” said Brett. “Really big guns. Really appallingly big guns.”

“Maybe information,” said Lewis. “Jenny Psycho was right there on the Standing when Owen and Hazel went down to Haden and entered the Madness Maze for the last time. Perhaps the great old Standing of my Clan is the one place where true information might still be held about what really happened, back then, at the end.”

“All right,” said Brett. “If we have to do this, let’s get down there, do the business, and get the hell offworld as fast as we can.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Rose.

“Yes,” said Lewis. “This world has never been a lucky place for my family. Take us down, Oz.”

 

 

The ship’s AI took them down slowly and carefully, checking constantly for traps and unpleasant surprises all the way down to the surface, but there was nothing. Lewis checked the instruments as well, but his eyes kept straying to the view of Shandrakor on the big screen. A steady tingle of excitement pulsed through him at the thought of being the first of his Clan to look on the original Standing in two hundred years. The ancient stone castle was a thing of legend, not history. The first Deathstalker, Giles, originator of the Family, had fled the old Empire in that castle, over a thousand years ago, before disappearing into the deadly jungles of Shandrakor; never to be seen again until the blessed Owen discovered the castle in the time of his own outlawing. The tangled tops of the jungle swept past beneath the
Hereward
as Oz headed for the exact coordinates provided by Lewis’s father. Lewis’s sense of awe became almost overpowering, not least because, deep down, where it mattered, he’d never felt like a real Deathstalker. The direct line of descent had been cut off two hundred years ago, with the deaths of David and Owen. King Robert and Queen Constance had granted the Family name to a line of distant cousins, to keep the celebrated name going. There was Deathstalker blood in Lewis, but he had to wonder if by now it was running thin. He looked down at the chunky black-gold ring on his hand, the sign and symbol of Clan authority. It had been Owen’s ring once, long thought lost along with him, but a man who everyone said was dead had come to Douglas’s Coronation, specifically to give the ring to Lewis. It felt very heavy on his hand. No one knew how old it was. Centuries, certainly—perhaps even from Giles’s time. Family legend had it that the ring contained secrets, but no one knew what they might be anymore. And now here Lewis was, bringing the ring back to Shandrakor, a planet that seemed determined to weave itself into Deathstalker history again and again. A world so significant to Clan Deathstalker that they had taken its name as their battle cry for over a thousand years.

Lewis also remembered the fate of Owen’s ship, the original
Sunstrider,
which crashed while trying to land in the Shandrakor jungles. Supposedly, bits of it were still scattered across the landscape somewhere. So Lewis made sure Oz took the
Hereward
down with all caution, and had the AI bring the ship to a halt hovering above the spiky canopy of the jungle. There was no clearing big enough to land the ship safely in, so Lewis used the
Hereward’
s newly discovered weapons to make a clearing, with a little creative destruction. Trees and vegetation disappeared in the blast of searing energies, and soon enough the ship settled softly down onto steaming, new-baked earth. Lewis checked the sensors carefully, but though there was a lot of restless movement in the trees at the edge of the new clearing, nothing ventured out into the open.

“I’m getting multiple life-readings in every direction,” Oz said conversationally. “Some of them so big they’re off the scale. Plus lots and lots of general activity. If I’m interpreting the roars, howls, and screams correctly, I would venture an educated guess that every living thing in this jungle is currently busy trying to eat, screw, and kill every other living thing. Not necessarily in that order.”

“I feel right at home,” said Saturday. “Why aren’t we disembarking yet?”

Brett sniffed. “I think you just answered your own question.” He studied the clearing perimeter on the bridge viewscreen and scowled unhappily. “We are definitely not alone here, people; and the natives look extremely restless. Just how nasty is this place, really?”

“According to all the legends, Shandrakor could win prizes for nasty, along with honorable mentions for vicious, deadly, and downright alarming,” said Lewis. “It was bad enough in the old days, when Owen and his people were forced to land here, but the current situation is actually even worse. Brett, try to stop that twitching, it’s very off-putting. Some two hundred years ago, King Robert and Queen Constance found themselves in the unenviable position of having to clean up after the war’s messes. There were a lot of monsters in the Empire in those days, running wild or locked away in hidden laboratories; the results of genetic tampering and experimentation by Lionstone’s scientists, the rogue AIs of Shub, and even the Mater Mundi. Creatures too powerful and too disturbed ever to be integrated into civilization. All kinds of madness had been given shape and form, to be used as weapons, or as research. Terrible things had been birthed in those secret laboratories, and a whole lot of them were still alive when the fighting was finally over. What’s the matter now, Brett?”

“Nothing,” Brett said quickly. He locked his hands tightly together to stop them shaking, and did his best to get his breathing back under control. He was remembering his encounter with the Spider Harps, the centuries old uber-espers living their awful lives in their cold stone lair deep under the Parade of the Endless on Logres. He still had nightmares about them.

“Anyway,” said Lewis, “these abominations of science had no place in the calm and civilized Golden Age Robert and Constance were so determined to build. The monsters couldn’t be cured, so the Empire rounded them all up, brought them here, and dumped them, leaving them to fend for themselves. Just as Lionstone once abandoned her lepers on Lachrymae Christi. I suppose it was considered more merciful than just killing them all. So, God alone knows what horrors we’ll find in the jungles of Shandrakor now, after the Empire’s monsters have been interbreeding with the local creatures for two hundred years.”

“Some of those monsters were human once,” said Jesamine. “Weren’t they?”

“Yes,” said Lewis. “People captured by Shub and experimented on. Unfortunately, the AIs did their work so well that even after they had their epiphany and became Humanity’s friends, they couldn’t undo what they had done. Another reason perhaps why Robert and Constance didn’t want them around.”

“Do you suppose any of them are still alive, here?”

“I hope not,” said Lewis. “If they weren’t insane when they got here, they must be by now.”

“I want to go home,” said Brett.

“Don’t be such a wimp,” said Rose. “It’s going to be danger and excitement and all the monsters we can kill. Who could ask for more? It’s going to be fun, fun, fun.”

Brett looked at her. “You’re really not helping, Rose.”

“And this is the place Jenny Psycho was so keen for us to come to,” said Jesamine. “Are we sure she’s on our side? A whole planet crawling with hideous monsters, quite possibly with grudges they’ve been nursing for centuries, and we’re supposed to go walkabout looking for a castle that’s probably just a pile of rubble. . . . Maybe I should sit this one out. Someone ought to stay on board ship, in case of emergencies.”

“If you like . . .” said Lewis.

“No, I don’t like! Of course I’m going with you! I don’t trust you out of my sight, Deathstalker. No telling what trouble you’d get into without me there to watch over you. But I don’t have to like it.”

“My sentiments exactly,” said Brett.

“Shut up, Brett,” said Jesamine.

“All right,” said Lewis. “Everyone grab whatever weapons you’re most comfortable with, and gather at the airlock. Once we’re out in the clearing, feel entirely free to shoot anything that moves that isn’t us. We have no friends here. Rose, please don’t smile like that. It’s very upsetting.”

Oz opened the airlock, and Lewis was first out, as always. He hit the ground, gun and sword in hand, his personal force shield buzzing on his arm. He barely had time to look around before what seemed like the entire monster population of the planet came charging out of the jungle from all directions at once, heading straight for him. The air was full of furious roaring and screaming from wide mouths crammed with far too many teeth. Oz opened up with every weapon the
Hereward
had, blasting the creatures into meaty chunks before they’d got halfway across the clearing. The charge broke up immediately, the surviving creatures disappearing swiftly back into concealing jungle.

Interesting,
thought Lewis.
Intelligent behavior. Mindless animals would have just kept coming, not understanding the extent of the threat. And they certainly wouldn’t have all retreated together. If they’ve learned to cooperate, we could be in really deep shit.

Lewis looked slowly around him as the rest of his people emerged from the airlock to join him. The whole jungle was suddenly very quiet, and Lewis could feel the pressure of watching eyes. The air was unpleasantly hot and humid, and stank of spilled blood and rotting meat. Gravity was a little lighter than standard, and the light was the color of blood. At the clearing perimeter, the dark-boled jungle trees were protected by rows of heavy spikes and barbs, and their long dangling branches were weighed down with clusters of thick pulpy leaves of a sickly purple-green. There were huge overripe flowers everywhere, blossoming in clouds of bright primal colors: solid yellows and blues and pinks. Gaudy, rather than attractive—but then Shandrakor wasn’t a subtle planet. Insects buzzed noisily, thick clouds of them occasionally surging out of the trees and into the clearing. Some of the monsters had begun calling to each other again, a savage mixture of high-pitched cries, long sustained hootings, and grunts so deep Lewis could feel them in his bones. It sounded very much like they were talking to each other, and perhaps they were. Lewis just hoped they weren’t discussing strategy.