Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

manage something really unpleasant, if it put its mind to it.
    Shame there weren't any survivors from the first contact team. I would have liked some firsthand impressions of what we might encounter."
    "There was one survivor," said Frost. "The Investigator. She failed to spot the dangers."
    "Might have known an Investigator would survive, if anyone could. What happened to her?"
    "They sent her to a hellworld."
    "Where she's no bloody use to all. Typical. Still, I'm surprised they didn't execute her."
    "The hellworld will do that."

    Silence decided not to press the point. Frost was clearly touchy about her fellow Investigator. They were all supposed to be perfect, dependable, infallible. It said so in their job description. Just like a Captain was always supposed to know what to do for the best… Silence smiled briefly and leaned back in his command chair. Time to get the show on the road, starting with a good look from a safe distance at exactly where they'd be landing. The landing site had already been decided, and remote control mechanisms were already busy constructing secure landing pads. Silence called up the view on his private screen and frowned thoughtfully. Grendel had no solid land masses anymore. Only ash. Silence had chosen this particular location because one of the few things his sensors could agree on was that there was a Vault there, barely a mile below the surface. Which made it the easiest by far to get at. Remote control mining equipment was currently digging its way down through the ash toward it.
    Except it wasn't alone down there. Surrounding the Vault for miles in all directions was a city, or what was left of it There was no trace left of the deserted cities on the surface. The scorching had left nothing but an endless sea of ash, from pole to pole. But under the ash, somehow miraculously untouched by all the destruction, lay the remains of an alien civilization. The first contact team had passed through an underground city to reach their Vault. The experience nearly drove them all mad. There was something about the city, something unbearable to the human mind. The sensors couldn't tell much about it, except that it was there and completely deserted. And right in the middle of that miles-wide city lay the main Vault of the Sleepers: a colossal steel tomb the size of a mountain. Only what slept within that tomb slept very lightly.
    Silence had already studied the first team's records of the city they
    encountered, but they didn't make much sense. They were far from complete, and what there was was decidedly unpleasant. The details were too strange, too alien, too unlike anything Silence had ever encountered before. Even Frost admitted to finding them disturbing, and she had more experience of the alien than everyone else on the Dauntless put together. Although some of the people on board were pretty strange in themselves. Silence grimaced briefly at the thought. He ought to check in on his contact team again, now that the drop was getting so close. He raised the marine sergeant Angelo Null on his private screen and nodded politely to the broad, faintly scowling face.
    "How are your boys doing, Sergeant? Any problems?"
    "Nothing I can't handle. They've been thoroughly briefed as to what happened to the last contact crew, so they're not exactly happy about the drop, but at least they know what they're getting into. The triple combat pay brought a smile to their faces, and the new battle drugs should help. The stuff we've been supplied with would make a mad dog killer out of a sainted nun. But I think we'll save that for emergencies. Chemical courage is all very well, but I prefer the real thing. Personally, I put more faith in the state-of-the-art weaponry they've given us. Very tasty. Recharge time is still two minutes minimum, but for sheer power and destructive capability, I've never seen anything like these guns.
    Gives me a warm, comfortable, secure feeling just looking at them."
    "I'm glad to hear that. Sergeant. But I feel I should remind you that the first contact team was also armed to the gills, and it didn't seem to help them much.
    So I want all your men armed with shrapnel clusters, concussion grenades, incendiaries and force shields, as well as disrupters. Never mind the expense; I'll take care of all that. You load your men down with as much as they can carry and still move freely. I'm also authorizing the use of two portable
    disrupter cannon and a tangle field. Get your people