Young Jack fought on, calling his followers on to victory. His enemies fell before him, and he trampled them underfoot, still smiling. His clothes were soaked with blood, none of it his. Near the end of the street, with the command center only yards away, he paused just long enough to throw a smile and a wink at Flynn's hovering camera.
'You know; there has to be an easier way to overthrow an Empire…'
And then he got back to work, and the killing continued. Up on the sled, Toby gave Flynn a high five. A hero, a bladesman, and charming with it. Young Jack was a godsend. The audience would eat this up with spoons. The networks would be repeating that particular moment on news anthologies for years to come, no matter who won the rebellion. Toby had to admit he much preferred the Young Jack Random to the older counterpart he'd met on Technos III. Young Jack understood the importance of a good sound bite. Toby was glad someone here did. Most of the rebels were too busy to talk to him, and those who would were usually too earthy in their comments. You could only bleep so much.
Toby steered the sled as close to Young Jack as he could. When in doubt, follow the story. And so he and Flynn were perfectly placed to see the grenade come arcing out of the defenders and tumble almost unhurriedly through the air toward Young Jack. It passed right in front of Flynn's camera, hung on the air for a long moment at the top of its loop, and then dropped directly toward Young Jack. Many of the rebels saw it coming, and screamed warnings, but in the tightly packed crowd of fighters, there was nowhere for Young Jack to go. The grenade exploded right in front of him, and his body took the full force of the explosion. The blast threw him to one side, crashing through friend and foe alike, and slammed him into the high stone wall that overlooked that side of the street. The wall swayed and then fell forward, collapsing on top of the people below. Dozens of other people, rebels and troops, had been hit by shrapnel from the grenade and they lay screaming in the street.
Finlay and Evangeline and Julian had been protected behind Julian's hastily thrown-up force shield. As it dropped, Finlay quickly yelled for rebels to come forward and hold back the troops while he dug through the rubble of the fallen wall. Men and women rushed forward into the gap, yelling for Finlay to save Young Jack. Finlay was pretty sure the man had to be dead, but if there was even a chance… He bent over the rubble and started pulling away bricks, and soon Evangeline and Julian were there to help him. More people pushed forward, wanting to help but only getting in the way. Julian put up a force shield to hold them back, until they got the message. Finlay and Evangeline kept digging. It didn't take them long to find the first body parts. People had been torn literally limb from limb by the force of the explosion. They kept digging, forcing their way down through the bloody remains. Flynn's camera hovered overhead, getting it all. Some of the body parts were still twitching. Finlay and Evangeline dug down through the pitiful scraps and remnants, arms bloody to the elbow, and finally they came to what was left of Young Jack Random. For a second they just stood there, stunned, and then Finlay turned and glared back at Toby and Flynn.
'Cut off the live feed! Do it now!'
Toby leaned off the edge of the sled to argue, looked past Finlay and saw what he saw, and made a sharp chopping gesture to Flynn. The cameraman nodded, and cut off the live broadcast, but kept the camera in place, still recording. Toby moved the gravity sled in over Finlay and Evangeline as they bent over the revealed body of the thing called Young Jack Random. The force of the grenade's explosion had torn away much of his skin, revealing the gleaming blue steel beneath. His face was gone, leaving only a metal skull. The eye sockets were empty, but the white teeth remained, giving the metal skull a disturbingly human smile. Young Jack Random was a Fury, a spy from Shub, a machine in the shape of a man, hiding under a human appearance. And it was still alive. The lower part of the body was seriously crushed by the fallen wall, and one arm was missing, but the torso and head were pretty much intact. The Fury raised its metal head slightly and nodded to Finlay and Evangeline. When it spoke, the slightly echoing voice was calm, almost friendly.
'All right, I'm a machine. But that doesn't mean we can't still be friends. You need me. Or who I'm pretending to be. I can be repaired. Cover my face, and no one will know the difference. Some of the truth is bound to leak out, but we can just tell everyone that I'm a cyborg. An augmented man. They'll buy that, after all Jack Random's supposed to have been through. You need me, Campbell. The rebels will follow a hero like me where they won't follow someone like you. So get a cloak to wrap me in, stick me on the Shreck's gravity sled, and I'll lead your people right into the command center.'
'Do you really think that any member of Humanity would follow a thing from Shub?' said Finlay, his voice cold and tight. 'Do you think we would? You represent the Enemies of Humanity. Sworn to wipe us out to the last man, woman, and child. No wonder you enjoyed the slaughter here so much. And what would you do, after the rebellion is over? Be a party to our plans and hopes, just when we're at our most vulnerable? Do you really think we'd let a metal wolf like you into our fold?'
'You don't really have much of a choice,' said the machine calmly. 'My systems are already repairing themselves, and you don't have any weapons here strong enough to destroy me. The grenade took me by surprise. It was unexpectedly powerful for its size. But soon I will be operating at acceptable efficiency levels again, and if you will not help me to pass as Jack Random, then I will fulfill my secondary programming, and kill every human here. What will that do to your push on the command center? Like it or not, you're stuck with me.'
'Like hell,' said Finlay. 'Julian, stamp this tin soldier flat.'
'Gladly,' said Julian, he called up his psistorm, compressed and focused it into a hammer of pure force, and brought it slamming down on the crippled Fury. The human-shaped machine flattened out like a starship had fallen on it, the metal cracking and shattering in a thousand places. Julian smiled coldly as the metal shape crumpled under the pressure of his mind. The esper concentrated, and the flattened metal rolled itself into a ball, shrinking and further compacting until all that remained was a solid sphere of metal, with no trace of life left in it. Julian smiled again.
'Repair that, you bastard.'
Finlay and Evangeline buried the sphere under a pile of body parts. Julian looked up at Flynn's camera, still hovering overhead, and scowled thoughtfully.
'Oh no, not the camera, please!' said Toby. 'We don't have another!'
'We can't let this piece of news get out,' said Julian. 'No one must ever know.'
'We know how to keep our mouths shut,' said Toby. 'This wouldn't be the first piece of film I've had to bury. Ask the Campbell; he'll vouch for me.'
'I don't know if I'd go that far,' said Finlay. 'But I think we can trust him to understand that if this piece of film ever surfaces again, there will be a queue of people waiting to kill him in slow and interesting ways. Right, Shreck?'
'Couldn't have put it better myself,' said Toby. 'I've seen you people in action. I don't want you coming after me. It doesn't really matter. I've already got enough great footage to make me immortal.'
'What about me?' said Flynn. 'Don't I get to be immortal, too?'
'I said immortal, not immoral. You just point the camera and leave the thinking to me.'
Flynn glared at him coldly. 'I am an artist. It's in my contract.'
'I know what you are,' said Toby. 'Now shut up and point the camera.'
'Bully,' said Flynn. 'You wait till your next direct to camera. I'll make you look really podgy.'
'You'd swear they were married, wouldn't you?' said Julian. 'Finlay, we have to get our people moving again, before they have time to think about what's happened here. If they panic, the whole push will fall apart.'
'Got it,' said Finlay. He stepped up onto the rubble so all the rebels could see him. 'Jack Random is dead! The Empire killed him. Are you going to let his death be for nothing? Or will you fight on, as he would have wanted? Then follow me, to death or glory!'
It was as basic as that, but it worked. The rebels roared their defiance to the Empire and surged forward again, howling for revenge. Finlay led the way, with Evangeline and Julian at his sides. He'd never doubted that the rebels would follow him, in Random's name. Sometimes a rebel leader can be a greater inspiration dead than alive. The defending troops had held their ground while they thought Random's death would demoralize the rebels, but the new, even more determined attack was just too much for them. Outnumbered and outfought, they cracked and turned and ran, some throwing away their weapons to show they were no longer a part of the war, and as quickly as that the battle was over. The troops ran in all directions, desperate to escape the killing grounds, and the rebels cut down those who didn't run fast enough.
Finlay stormed forward, heading for the huge steel doors that were the only entrance to the command-center bunker. Disrupters built into the bunker walls opened up, but Julian deflected the beams with his esp until rebel
