Deathstalker

left in the hands of the lower classes. Energy weapons are difficult to make and very expensive. So, they replace projectile guns, and the only effective weapons end up the property of the ruling classes and their enforcers. Good thinking. But I never believed in it, so I never went along with it. Which is at least partly why I ended up here.'

He stopped before the portal, snapped 'Armory!' and then stepped through and vanished. Owen looked at the others.

'Well, what do you think? Do we follow him?'

'He's your ancestor,' said Haze. 'Can we trust him?'

'I don't know. He's not what I expected.'

'Put it this way,' said Random. 'What other choice do we have? We can't even find our way out of this place without him.'

He stepped through the transfer portal, and the others followed him. There was the usual sudden shift from one view to another, and then Owen stopped dead in his tracks and looked about him. He was in another great hall, stretching away before him for as far as he could see, but here the walls were covered with more kinds of weapons than he'd ever seen in his life. There were handguns and rifles of all shapes and sizes, including several it would have taken two men to carry. None of them looked to be energy guns.

'What the hell are they?' whispered Hazel beside him.

'Projectile weapons,' said Owen. 'I've seen some of these in the older archive records. They were effective and efficient, but no damn use at all against force shields. They were also no match for the range and accuracy of energy guns. That's why the old style of weapon was replaced by the new. Officially.'

'Shot for shot they were right,' said Giles. 'A disrupter can outperform any projectile weapon. But on the other hand, they don't have to stop and recharge between shots for two minutes. You can fire over and over again, as long as your ammunition holds out. You'd be surprised how much damage you can do when you're firing a thousand rounds a second. I have a gun here for every occasion, small and large. There are weapons here that can assassinate a single man in a crowd from up to two miles away, and others that could take out a whole town.'

'Unless they have force shields,' said Owen.

Giles grinned at him. 'That's better, boy. At least you can think like a warrior. Force shields are fine, but they also have a built-in limitation: they only last as long as their energy crystals hold out. Once they've been drained by constant use, it takes forever to recharge them. So all you have to do is maintain a steady stream of fire, wait for the shields to go down, and then charge right in.' He gestured grandly at the others. 'Take a look around. See if there's something here that takes your fancy. You stay with me, boy.' He waited for the others to move away, and then turned to Owen and lowered his voice. 'Fill me in. How big is your army? How many men am I going to have to supply guns for?'

Owen looked at him blankly for a moment. 'I don't actually have an army, sir. There's just myself, and my associates here. Our ship crashed not far from here. It's a wreck. We're all there is, sir.'

Giles pursed his lips and nodded slowly. 'Deathstalker luck. Always bad. Fortunately for you, boy, I have a ship. How big a force have you got on your tail? I assume the Empire was right behind you when you jumped to come here?'

'Yes, sir. Two Imperial starcruisers.'

Giles looked at him with a certain amount of respect for the first time. 'Now that's more like it. Don't worry, we'll be gone long before they can get here. Tell me about your friends. Are they good fighters? Reliable?'

'The best. Hazel d'Ark's a pirate and clonelegger. Ruby Journey's a bounty hunter, Jack Random's a professional rebel, and the disturbing-looking one is Tobias Moon. He's an augmented man.'

'A cyborg? They were still trying to make that work when I left. Is he any good in a fight?'

Owen grinned. 'Moon kicks ass. Anybody's ass. But I wouldn't turn your back on him too often. Augmented men often have their own agendas. And all of my people are good fighters.'

'Can I depend on them? Will they follow orders?'

'Maybe. After all, they're outlaws, like me. And like you. Convince them that it's in their best interests to work with you, and they will. But don't just give them orders and expect them to snap to attention. They don't have much love or respect for authority in general and aristos in particular. But they're good people. Mostly.'

'And what about you, Owen Deathstalker the historian? Can you fight?'

'I do all right,' Owen said steadily. 'I've been trained by the best, and I have the boost. I can take care of myself.'

'The boost? That's another thing they were trying to make work when I left. You're full of surprises, kinsman. Unfortunately, I now have one for you. According to my computers, an Imperial starship has just dropped into orbit around Shandrakor. The Standing's shielded from their sensors, unless they've radically improved since my day, but your wrecked ship isn't. It won't take them long to spot it and send some heavily armed people down to check for survivors. I've downloaded your AI into my systems; pretty sophisticated, but not half as smart as it thinks it is.'

'Oz!' said Owen. 'Are you there?'

'Where else would I be?' said Ozymandius. 'You should see the antiquated system they've dumped me in. Wouldn't surprise me if this junk ran on steam power. Give me a week or two and I'll be running things around here.'

'Behave yourself. We're guests here. We'll talk later. For now, keep your eyes and ears open and make yourself useful.'

'Got it.'

Owen looked at Giles. 'He's been with me a long time. He's a pain in the ass, but he's good at what he does.'

'I heard that!'

'Shut up, Oz.'

'Tell me, Owen,' said Giles. 'Why did you come here looking for me?'

'My only hope for survival is to mount a rebellion against the Empress. And for that I need the Darkvoid Device.' With Giles' eyes boring into his, it never even occurred to Owen to lie. 'Do you still have it?'

'No. But I know where it is. I only ever used it once, and a thousand stars blinked out in a moment, leaving nothing but darkness. The Darkvoid. Thousands of inhabited planets were left without suns; billions upon billions of people died. That's a lot of ghosts for one man to live with. I'd done many questionable things in my time as Warrior Prime, and come to terms with them, but that was too much, even for me.

'I'd sworn an oath to protect and preserve the Empire, not destroy it piece by piece for the pleasure of others. I created the Device almost by accident, while working on something else. I was the only one who could operate it. That made it my responsibility. So I did the only responsible thing left to me: I took the Device and ran. Hid myself here, where no one would ever find me except Family. And just as a safeguard, I stashed the Device somewhere else. I left it in the heart of the Madness Maze on the cold corpse of the Wolfling World, deep in the Darkvoid.'

Owen looked at him for a long moment, searching for something to say. The Wolflings were a part of legend: the first genetically-engineered human beings. They were supposed to be living killing machines, the perfect soldiers, but unfortunately the Empire did its work too well. The Wolflings were unbeatable. The Empire grew scared of what it had created and wiped out the Wolflings while they were still trapped on their planet. It was lost to history when it became part of the Darkvoid. No wonder no one had ever found the Device, if it was hidden there. Few ships had ever crossed the Rim into the Darkvoid and come back to tell of it.

'We need the Device,' he said finally. 'Our rebellion hasn't a hope in hell without it.'

Giles looked at him steadily. 'And is your rebellion really so important?'

'You've been asleep a long time,' said Hazel, suddenly there beside them. 'You don't know how bad things have got. If you're rich or an aristo or connected, you can have anything, do anything, and no one can stop you. You can destroy lives, and no one can make you pay.'

'They use and discard us,' said Moon. 'And no one cares.'

'I've fought the Empire all my adult life,' said Jack Random. 'Fought and bled on a hundred worlds, only to see my war for truth and justice come to nothing. They have the ships and the weapons and the armies, and all we have is right on our side. It's not enough.'

Giles looked at Ruby Journey. She was standing quietly at the back, arms folded. She looked bored. 'What about you, bounty hunter? Don't you have anything to say to me? No appeals to my better nature?'