Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return by Simon R. Green

can't let him die here."
    Carrion considered the viewscreen before him. When he looked round again, he was alone in the lobby.
    Lewis leaned heavily against the thick bole of a golden tree, panting for breath. His sword hung down from his hand, too heavy to lift for the moment. Blood dripped from his dented and scored armor, some of it his own. He looked around him, but all the troops he could see were dead. He could hear more of them crashing back and forth in the trees and shouting incoherently to each other, but most seemed to be moving away. Jesamine was sitting on the ground beside him, her shoulders slumped with exhaustion.
    Lewis was worried about her. She wasn't built for this.
    Brett and Rose were sitting together, not far away. Rose had a cloth in her hand, and was using it to
    wipe the blood off Brett's face with slow, careful movements, as though she'd never done anything like that before. Brett sat very still, and let her.
    A little farther away, Saturday was eating something with great enjoyment. None of the others looked at him.
    Lewis looked up at the sky, where the Ashrai were still circling. "Damn them," he said quickly. "We're here for them too. Why won't they help? Don't they know the Terror will come for them too, if we can't stop it? We cant die here, not so early in our quest…"
    "They know," said Jesamine. "They just don't care. All they care about is killing humans, continuing their war, which should have ended centuries ago."
    "If only I could have made Carrion listen…" said Lewis.
    "Oh, hell," said Jesamine, clambering unsteadily to her feet. "I may not be much of a fighter, but if there's one thing I've always been able to do, it's make people listen."
    She glared up into the sky at the soaring Ashrai, took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and sang. On some level, she could still hear the song of the trees and the Ashrai, the song of Unseeli, and now she answered it with a song of her own, a harmony and a counterpoint; the song of Humanity. Her voice rang out clear as any bell, cutting effortlessly across the clamor of the surrounding troops. She sang, her voice proud and true, with words and melodies from a dozen songs—from all the operas she'd ever sung in her long career— and it seemed like the whole world stopped to listen to her.
    And the Ashrai sang back to her, their voices joining and combining, forming a glorious whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Jesamine Flowers sang, and the Ashrai answered, and the two songs joined to become one. Jesamine stopped singing, and so did the Ashrai. And in that echoing silence, the Ashrai dropped out of the glowing sky and fell upon the Imperial troopers surrounding Lewis and his people.
    The marines cried out in shock and horror as the Ashrai came sweeping between the towering trees with almost supernatural grace, and were upon them before they could even aim their weapons. Everywhere in the metallic forest, marines screamed and died, and Jesamine watched, with tears in her eyes, the ugly results of such a beautiful song.
    Carrion watched it all on his viewscreens, and felt a great weight lift from his heart as the decision was made for him. He should have remembered that Deathstalkers always got their own way, eventually. Ah, well, he murmured, and walked out of Base Thirteen. He lifted his feet from the ground and flew up through the diffused light, punching through the heavy cloud layer and on out into space. He didn't feel the cold and he didn't need to breathe, and energy crackled up and down the length of his power lance, that ancient banned weapon. He concentrated and his speed increased, until the first starcruiser loomed swiftly up before him. Carrion smashed through the ship's force shields like they weren't even there, and then hammered his way through the many layers of steel in under a second before bursting out the hull on the other side. He swung around and hit the ship again, targeting the engines this time, punching holes