air, and the forearm swung back and forth at an unnatural angle. Finlay fired again, taking out the right elbow, and the right forearm was almost torn away by the impact.
Gregor was screaming steadily now, barely stopping to suck in new breath between each scream. His eyes bulged, and his mouth stretched impossibly wide. Finlay took his time aiming, and shot Gregor in his grossly distended stomach, just above the navel. This time the impact had a soft, muffled sound. Gregor howled like an animal. Finlay shot him in the groin, and blood spurted high up into the air. Gregor screamed and howled his sanity away, and still couldn't hide from the awful, horrible pain.
Finlay stood and listened for a while, smiling his death's-head grin. Half the chamber was on fire now. He looked around for Valentine, but there was no sign of the body anywhere. The Wolfe must have crawled away to die. He wouldn't get far with half his chest shot away. Finlay turned back to Gergor, still screaming like a soul newly damned to Hell.
'This is for you, Evie,' Finlay murmured, and put a bullet through each of Gregor's eyes, blowing the back of his head away.
Finlay Campbell lowered the empty gun and looked down on the dead body of his enemy. It comforted him. The flames were all around him, and no doubt sweeping through all the floors below. There were no windows in Gregor's private quarters, no way out. He could hear explosions everywhere. The Tower wouldn't last much longer. Finlay looked calmly around him. And wondered what he would do next.
CHAPTER SIX
Cry Havoc
The Empire, dangerously weakened in its transitional state between the new and old orders, found itself under attack from all sides at once. And everything went to hell in a handcart. Old enemies came howling out of the dark, falling like wolves on undefended colonies out on the Rim. A massive fleet of Shub starships burst out of the Forbidden Sector, brushing aside the quarantining starcruiser, and laid waste to every inhabited planet in its path. Powered by the new alien-derived stardrive, they were effectively unstoppable by anything save the few remaining E-class starcruisers in the Imperial Fleet.
The great golden ships of the Hadenmen appeared out of nowhere, striking viciously at unsuspecting planets all along the Rim in The Second Great Crusade of the Genetic Church. It soon become clear they were emerging from hidden bases deep beneath the surfaces of uninhabited worlds. The Hadenmen had recently established secret Nests all across the Empire, not wanting to place all their eggs in one fragile basket again. The Deathstalker's destruction of Brahmin II had proven them right, and spurred on by the elimination of what should have been their second homeworld, all the Hadenmen Nests opened at once. The huge golden ships of feared legend ranged the long night again, bringing death and destruction and worse than death.
The insect ships were back too. Gliding silently out of the dark like huge, sticky balls of compacted webbing, driven by unknown forces, they passed unaffected through planetary defenses and discharged crawling armies of killer insects, eating whole cities alive and leaving nothing behind save bare, gnawed bones. They made no threats, issued no demands, could not be talked to or warned off. They just descended from the skies in silent horror and fell upon everything that lived. Soon there were whole planets out on the Rim covered by scuttling, seething insects, crawling blindly through the ruins of what had once been human cities.
The Empire wasted remarkably little time springing to its own defense. Parliament organized Golgotha into one great communications and tactical center, alerted all planets and colonies in the path of danger, and rushed ships, men, and weapons to defend those not yet fallen or attacked. Luckily, though Shub, Hadenmen, and insects shared a common enemy in Humanity, they showed no interest in any form of alliance. They went their own way, chose their own targets, and did not cooperate, even when it was clearly in their best interests to do so. But they didn't attack each other either, sticking strictly to their own territories, for the moment.
Planets and colonies fell, one by one, all along the Rim, and the three attacking forces moved steadily inward, heading for the greater concentrations of Humanity and the vulnerable heart of the Empire: Golgotha. Some colonists tried, against all Parliament's wishes and advice, to strike deals with those attacking them. It did no good.
General Beckett's devastated Imperial Fleet did what it could, but its capabilities were limited from the first. The few surviving E-class ships with the new stardrive couldn't be everywhere at once, and worlds under attack cried out for help all the time. Beckett sent what was left of his Fleet darting all over the Empire, pulling in every last ship with a crew and working guns, even those patrolling the Darkvoid, and rushed them from one trouble spot to another, but all too often they got there too late to do any real good. He then tried splitting up the Fleet, dispatching his most powerful starcruisers to defend those planets in most immediate danger. But Imperial starcruisers caught on their own were quickly outnumbered and outgunned, and had no choice but to run for their lives, usually heavily damaged. Unnerved by the loss of too many irreplacable ships, Parliament ordered Beckett to regroup his Fleet and pull them back to protect the more densely populated inner worlds of the Empire. Everyone else was left to fend for themselves. Whole populations struggled to evacuate their worlds, cramming themselves into the cargo holds of any ship with a working stardrive. Many never reached their destinations. Many more populations stood their ground and fought, ready to die rather than give up the worlds they had made their own, through generations of hard work and sacrifice.
The invasion had actually begun to slow when Shub launched its new wave. Vast armadas of new ships made their appearance, without the new stardrive but built from the harvested metal trees of Unseeli. From these ships issued great armies of Ghost Warriors and Furies and the deadly biomechanical aliens they had looted from the secret Vaults on Grendel. Unstoppable, implacable, they existed only to kill. Dead men with computer implants. Steel machines in the shape of men. Aliens bioengineered by some forgotten race to be perfect killing machines. Horror troops. Terror weapons. Just like the insects, they overran Humanity's armies, leaving only blood and bone behind. But still Humanity resisted, forgetting old animosities and diversions in the face of a common enemy. There were victories as well as losses, but never enough.
The Empire was being invaded on three fronts, by its most deadly enemies, and the fighting was spread across worlds already sickened and weakened by the length and bitter fighting of the rebellion. Some just didn't have it in them to fight anymore. There were shortages of everything needed to fight a war, the ships and weapons that ought to have stopped the invaders having been used up when Humanity fought itself. Shub and the Hadenmen and the insects had chosen their moment well. But Humanity fought on, and thanked God that at least the alien Recreated hadn't made an appearance yet. Because there was no one left to watch the Darkvoid.
The people called out for their heroes, the great warriors of the rebellion, but most were dead, or nowhere to be found. And the four greatest, the four survivors of the Madness Maze, had been sent off on distant, vital missions from which they might not return.
The army of the rogue AIs of Shub came to the planet Loki, world of eternal storms, and were invited in by human traitors. Ghost Warriors strode unfeeling through the howling winds of Loki, side by side with the human turncoats. Outer settlements fell quickly, and the central city of Vidar, overseer of the extensive mining operations, sent out a desperate call for help. There were no ships available, but it was a valuable planet, so Parliament did the next best thing, and sent them Jack Random and Ruby Journey.
The
'Now, this is what I call a ride!' she yelled over the din of the storm and the pinnace's straining engines. 'You'd have to pay good money for a ride like this back in Golgotha's theme parks!'
