Deathstalker

your map and your plan. What do we do?'

'There's no problem,' said Hood. 'My people are waiting on the other side. They'll open the door.'

He strode forward and rapped twice on the steel door. It slid upward, and lights blazed into the access tunnel, revealing an army of armed guards in the room beyond. Hood laughed and blinked out of existence.

'It's a trap!' yelled Finlay. 'Everyone back! Hood's betrayed us!'

And as quickly as that, everything went to hell. There was a clamor of raised voices in the narrow corridor, with shouts and screams and a confused mess of orders and naked panic. Those at the rear turned to run, but a heavy steel door slammed down from the ceiling, cutting off their escape. So much for telepathic invisibility, thought Finlay. He grabbed Evangeline by the arm and pulled her behind him, putting his body between her and the armed guards ahead. He just had time to wonder why they weren't firing yet, and why they were wearing masks, when thick clouds of evil-smelling gas burst out into the corridor from concealed vents in the floor. The first breath was enough to set unprotected rebels coughing and choking. Finlay tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go.

And then a sudden wind roared through the corridor, forcing the gas back upon the guards and dispersing it as fast as it could form. The hidden vents exploded in showers of sparks and collapsed in upon themselves, closing off the gas. Esper power crackled on the air like harnessed lightning, so thick and close that even a normal like Finlay could feel it. The guards realized the gas attack wasn't working and turned their guns on the rebels. Finlay raised his arm automatically, slapping at the bracelet on his wrist to activate his force shield. The roar of energy beams was deafening in the confined space, joined with the screams of the dying and the injured as rebels fell. There was the stench of burning flesh and melting metal as energy beams tore through bodies and ricocheted off the reinforced steel walls.

They knew we were coming this way, thought Finlay. They've got us trapped in a killing field. He picked a target almost without thinking and shot a guard in the head. The top of the man's skull exploded in a shower of boiled blood and brains, and the guards around him fell back, shouting with shock and disgust. They hadn't expected any resistance. Finlay grinned savagely. When in doubt, do the unexpected. He ran forward, brandishing his sword, yelling for the others to follow him, and no one was more surprised than him when they did. Evangeline was there beside him, yelling her Clan's war cry and holding a sword like she knew what to do with it. The surviving espers and clones were right behind them, firing guns if they had them, and esper power thundered among the guards.

Swords clashed on swords as the two forces slammed together, and the guards tried to make a stand. But even savagely depleted by the unexpected ambush, the rebels were still more than a match for the guards. The Stevie Blues stood together, the same grim expression on the same faces as fire roared from their hands. Guards dropped their swords and ran screaming as their clothes and hair burst into flames. Espers picked up guards with their minds and slammed them together with deadly force. Blood flew on the air. Bones cracked and skulls collapsed under the implacable mental pressure, and some guards just stood and stared with horror-filled eyes as telepaths ripped through their thoughts with tides of fear and depression and self-loathing. And those rebels who weren't espers took their revenges with the point and edge of unforgiving swords.

Eventually Finlay looked round for another target and found there were no more left. Guards lay scattered across the floor of the chamber in awkward, blood-soaked poses, like broken dolls thrown aside by a bored child. Only rebels were still standing, looking confusedly about them, and it nearly broke Finlay's heart to see how few of them there were. Out of the fifty or so who'd accompanied him into Wormboy Hell, only nineteen remained, and three of them were Stevie Blues. He took a deep breath, turned off his force shield and flicked drops of blood from his sword. Someone would have to take charge, and it looked like it was going to have to be him. He had no real authority, but he'd spent enough time in the Arena to know that sometimes confidence is everything.

'All right, listen to me! You can bet there are more guards on the way here, armed to the teeth, even as I speak. We have to form a perimeter. Anyone with esp, find a corridor opening and guard it. Everyone else, grab a gun. Anyone you see coming this way is almost certainly an enemy, so shoot on sight. If you kill the wrong person by accident, we can always apologize later. Now move it!'

The Stevie Blues and a handful of others nodded unresistingly and hurried off. Finlay turned to Evangeline. There was a smear of someone else's blood on one cheek, and she was staring dumbly about her at the heaped piles of the dead. There was more blood spattered across her clothes, some of it hers. Finlay took her by the arm and made her turn around to face him.

'Don't blank out on me now, Evie. I need to know what you know. How many other groups of us were there in this assault?'

'Five,' said Evangeline, swallowing hard and visibly trying to pull herself together.

'Can we contact them, see if they were ambushed, too?'

'They were,' said a quiet voice beside them. It was a short, slightly overweight man with wide eyes and an open face. He might have looked like an accountant, if it hadn't been for the sword he held in a businesslike manner and the blood that soaked his sleeve to the elbow. 'I'm a telepath. Denny Pindar. I heard most of them die.'

'Then we're on our own,' said Finlay. 'I say the mission is officially aborted, and I further say we get the hell out of here.'

'No,' said Evangeline. 'If we just turn and run, then the others died for nothing.'

'If we try to take on overwhelming odds in enemy territory for no good reason, we'll die for nothing!'

'No good reason?' Evangeline looked at him steadily. 'You swore a death oath to bring this place down, Finlay Campbell. Is your word worth so little?'

'Damn. I was hoping you'd forgotten that. You're right, as usual. But what can we do with just the handful of people we've got left?'

'Find Wormboy and kill him. He holds this place together. Without him it'll fall apart into chaos. We'll be able to free the prisoners and fight our way out of here.'

'Great plan,' said Finlay. 'Have we got time to write our wills first? All right, let's look at the situation. Pindar, can you detect any hidden cameras or surveillance equipment here?'

The esper concentrated, then pointed at a wall decoration that looked just like all the others. Stevie One looked back briefly from guarding her corridor opening, and the decoration burst into flames. Finlay nodded his thanks.

'Evie, can we contact the cyberats? They might know more about what's going on.'

'No, it was set up so that they could reach us, but not the other way round. Their comm units are specially shielded. Ours aren't.'

'Then we'll just have to follow the map and hope it's not part of the trap, too.' A thought struck him, and he looked at Pindar. 'How come they didn't use esp-blockers against us? We'd have been dead in the water if they had.'

The telepath shook his head. 'There are no esp-blockers inside Silo Nine. They'd interfere with Wormboy's control. Security must have been banking on the gas and their superiority in numbers to make the difference. It did, with the other groups. They never had a chance to defend themselves. If you hadn't taken the initiative away from them by rallying us to strike first, we'd have just stood there and died like the others. We're not used to combat.' He broke off, his eyes suddenly far away. 'Company's coming.'

Finlay looked automatically to the Stevie Blues. 'Can you see anyone?'

'You won't see them,' said Pindar. 'They're shielded. They're battle espers.'

'Oh, shit,' said Evangeline. 'We're dead.'

Finlay glared at her. 'We're not dead till I say we are. So they're battle espers—so what? We'll just stay out of their way.'

'We can't,' said Pindar. 'They're coming from all directions.'

Finlay glared at him. 'Don't you ever have anything positive to say? Can we fight them?'

'If you really want to annoy them,' said Evangeline. 'These are espers specially trained and conditioned by the Empire to fight other espers. We can't talk to them, or reason with them, and they don't accept surrenders. They just kill and kill till there's no one left alive but them.'

'There's got to be a way to beat them,' said Finlay. 'There's got to be a way. What about you, Pindar? Could you use your esp to fight them?'

'If I had to,' said the telepath, blinking owlishly. 'But they're much more powerful than any of us. And there's a lot more of them than there are of us.'