Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

to breathe. "Let's not panic ourselves, people. The first team had their difficulties, but it wasn't failing tech that killed them. The Sleepers did that. At least we've got the battle espers and the Wampyr, both of whose strengths are non-tech in origin. Speaking of which; espers, get over here."
    They drifted over to stand before him, dull-eyed and listless. Silence looked at them sternly. "I'm turning off the esp-blockers. You're no use to me as you are now. Shield yourselves as best you can, but when we open up that wall, I want everything you've got trained on whatever comes out. Got it?"
    The espers stared at him like children awaiting punishment. One of them looked
    at him with something like anger in his eyes.
    "You should never have brought us here, Captain. We don't belong here, any of us. It's not a human place, with human limitations. There are things out there in the darkness that we dare not look at. If you expose us to them, we'll die."
    "If you don't stop whining and get your act together, I'll kill you," snapped Silence. "You're battle espers, dammit. You're supposed to have been trained to handle things like this. Now brace yourselves."
    He gestured to the marines to turn off the esp-blockers, and for a second nothing happened. And then the esper who'd spoken took a deep breath and stepped back a pace, and his head exploded. Silence cried out in disgust and shock as blood and brains spattered his uniform. Another esper began talking swiftly and urgently in a language no one recognized. The remaining espers huddled together as though for comfort, eyes closed, concentrating all the power of their unusual minds to protect themselves. Silence felt something like guilt stirring within him, but pushed it aside. He didn't have time.
    "Are you stable now? Can we proceed with the mission?"
    The espers nodded slowly in unison. One of them glared at Silence. "Do it. Do it while you still can. It knows we're here."
    Silence turned to the marines manning the two disrupter cannon. The gleaming solidity and power of the guns reassured him. There was enough power there to blast a hole through a starship's hull.
    "Everyone stand clear. On my order, fire both cannon. New!"
    The two guns fired as one, the brilliant energy beams almost blinding in the gloom. Crackling energy played across the steel wall of the Vault without damaging it. And then slowly a door opened in the wall, twenty feet high and a
    dozen wide, swinging reluctantly back as though the sheer pressure of the guns had forced it to reveal itself. The energy beams snapped off, and everyone stared breathlessly at the darkness beyond the door, now half ajar.
    Silence's hand tightened round his gun till his knuckles ached, bracing himself for a flood of ravening alien life, but there was nothing, nothing at all. It was very quiet now that the cannon had stopped firing. The only sound was the massed breathing of the expectant contact team. And then a single alien leapt out of the doorway, and blood flew on the air as it tore into the team with an insane fury.
    It was huge and awful, but all Silence got was an impression of glistening scarlet armor and jagged steel teeth. It moved among them, fast as thought, ripping and tearing a path through the marines with its teeth and claws, picking marines up and throwing them away as though they were nothing. Everyone was firing their guns, but the alien was never where they aimed. It was huge and fast and deadly and it seemed to be everywhere at once. Disrupter beams blazed across the narrow space, cutting down two marines and one of the Wampyr. And then the battle espers hit the creature with a wave of psychokinetic force, holding it in place through the sheer power of their minds. It looked like a nightmare in spiked bloodred armor, vaguely humanoid in form, its heart-shaped head lacking anything like a human lace or expression.
    For a moment everyone was still, and then the Wampyr swarmed over the alien, trying to pull it down with their superior strength, but already the hold of the espers was weakening. Without the esp-blockers to protect them, the city was just too much to bear. The alien turned its inhuman head, and beams of crackling energy burst from its mouth and eyes, blowing people apart in sudden bloody explosions. It gestured sharply, and new spikes thrust out of its armor,
    transfixing the gripping Wampyr. Black blood spurted from their mouths, but they didn't scream and they wouldn't release their