Cold Rock was hell. Gorion's throbbing headache and the blood dripping from his left nostril were the least of his concerns.

They'd sought to overthrow the Empire's brutal control and bring freedom to the planet Cold Rock, only the Empire's soldiers were crushing them. It was likely they'd also been betrayed from within in some way.

Gorion's psi-storm beat against the huge battle machines and tides of marines coming their way. He was an esper, a strong one. He was born on the streets of Golgotha and spent a childhood escaping imperial forces who'd capture and brainwash anyone with esp they found. By rare good fortune, he contrived to become a librarian's apprentice and keep his gifts hidden. When he was young he was a rebel. Middle-aged, he thought he'd retired by taking a job in the planet-sized and politically neutral Tartaros Library. And now, against his better judgment, he'd come as an old man to fight at his old friend Keldorn's side.

Gorion hoped at least he had kept his child safe. Little Imoen. She wasn't his daughter by blood, but he and his friend Dan Winthrop had rescued her and brought her up. After Dan's death there was only him. The little girl with a ready gap-toothed smile and strawberry pigtails had grown into a wired-up cyberrat flying through the digital world, somewhere in the depths of Golgotha's vast underbelly. Gorion and Dan had looked after another child as well for a time, but Imoen was the one who'd stayed with them. Stay safe, Imoen. Be safe wherever you are now.

He scanned the battlefield. Time to make his last blow against the Empire count.

"Go!" Gorion screamed, and the psi energies ripped out of his body to make it so. Emotions and raw telekinetic force seized his allies for their retreat. It was important that Gorion's companions, including the legendary professional rebel Keldorn Firecam, live to fight another day. For the people of the Empire to have even a chance of freedom, Gorion had to save as many of his friends as he could.

One old man against the Imperial High Guard ...

Gorion walked out into the Cold Rock wilderness, his psi storm blowing around him.

Two Imperial starship cruisers. Four tank carriers. Three regiments of ground troops. Fires scorching the planet, infernos burning what was left of the rebel settlements.

Gorion gathered his mind and aimed at the first starcruiser, to buy his friends a chance of escape. His poltergeist's energies crackled around the C-class seams, seeking a way in.

But he'd missed that the marines were already on top of him. The disrupter blast seared toward him, a bright painful beam.

Told you, Dan, there's always a light at the end of the tunnel ...

... And usually it's a train.

Instinctively, Gorion had his hand up to shield himself. It wouldn't do anything. No tech or psi could beat disrupter fire.

But something, someone, was singing in a woman's voice.

Except for Me, my dear Gorion.

The disrupter beam burst around him in a haze of light. It split apart at the point his raised hand commanded. He was unscathed.

Gorion's rage lost control. The flames of his mind first ripped the marines apart, and he flung everything inside himself above into the sky.

The psi storm tore apart the starcruiser rivet by rivet with the fury of a billion espers. It crackled with lightning and fell from the sky streaming smoke. Gorion gathered it up in his mind, powerful enough to do anything, burning like a dying star.

He flung the C-class into the other cruiser. Ship's crew and ship's espers screamed and died, and their souls were devoured by the power that was in him.

This is not my power.

At the corner of Gorion's awareness, shadowed, cloaked before he even knew it himself, a small ship escaped Cold Rock. Some rebels would fight another day.

You are ... Gorion asked the presence that gripped him, like a vague impossible memory of his mother long ago.

Don't you know? the voice sung. I am the Mater Mundi. The patron saint of all espers. Too long, my children, too long are you dying.

Gorion knew the pain of espers in the Empire. Espers were property, not people. Hunted, tormented, tortured, brainburned, brainwashed, broken down to component parts, enslaved. The Mater Mundi showed it to him. The rage he felt fuelled the psi-storm that batted Empire tanks aside like dust in the wind. Unstoppable fires broke out in a thousand places through the invading army.

But the candle that burns the brightest lasts the least ...

Seams traced with fire burst on Gorion's own body, dividing his flesh as he'd done to the starcruiser. It wasn't in the nature of humans to handle such energies.

The Mater Mundi, Mother of All Souls, was the most powerful telepath ever created. Secret founder of the underground. So they said. At rare and amazing times she reached out to her children and made them her avatars, for as long as their minds and bodies could bear the strain.

He'd seen the smile on the face of the tiger, Gorion thought. Countless Empire troops rushed in like a horde of ants to fill the void, even as the psi storm flared and many died. There were many more. Marines were expendable.

There was no doubt that the Empire had won Cold Rock. But he'd sold his life dearly, and that was all Gorion had wished for.

Like the snuffing of a candle, the fire of the Mater Mundi departed from Gorion's frame.

Gorion remembered that his rebel friends had escaped. He remembered Imoen as a child, a guilty sugar-frosted smile on her face after she'd snuck enough candy to make her ill for a week. But in fact Imoen was perfectly fine afterward.

Gorion saw a blinding light as his body tore itself apart from the inside out.

And then he saw nothing at all. Not even darkness.