Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

looked at Silence calmly.
    "I've seen what Shub has planned for us. It's horrible. I have no wish to see it happen. Goodbye, Captain. It's been… interesting. I'd damn you and the Empire to hell, but hell is coming for you anyway."
    And he put the gun to his head, and shot himself. Silence cursed as the headless body slumped to the floor and knelt down to pry his disrupter from the esper's hand. "Damn. That is not going to look good on my report. I should have known better than to give him a gun."
    Frost shrugged. "Espers. Fragile, all of them."
    Silence straightened up and bolstered his gun. "Sleeper Ghost Warriors… they'd be unstoppable in the field. But why come here now? Are they planning a new offensive? And if so, when and where? We'd better get back to the ship. The Empire has to know about this."
    "Something else to think about," said Frost. "How did the Ghost Warriors break through our quarantine? The Captain of the Defiant was quite definite that nothing had got past him, let alone landed on Grendel, broke open the Vaults and carried away the Sleepers. The only answer that makes sense is that the AIs on Shub have developed some really effective new cloaking technology, powerful enough to blind all our sensors. Which is really bad news for all of us. It means the Ghost Warriors could strike anywhere, anytime, and the first we'd know of it would be when their attack ships started blasting our cities. We wouldn't even be able to fight back; what use would our energy weapons be without sensors
    to aim them?"
    "If you've quite finished lowering our morale, I've got something else that'll spoil your day," said Silence. "We're going to have to check out all the other Vaults on Grendel, one by one, to see if they've been opened and emptied by the Ghost Warriors. And you saw what opening up just this one did to us."
    "Join the Fleet and see the universe. We have to be sure, Captain. There's always Stelmach's machine."
    "For as long as it holds up under these conditions. We can't trust anything down here. Anything at all."
    Back on the bridge of the Dauntless, Silence sat slumped in his command chair and tried hard not to fall asleep through sheer weariness. He'd taken a little something to keep him awake and alert, but it was taking a long time kicking in.
    Frost stood beside his chair, cool and collected as always. She looked as fresh and fit as if she'd just arrived on duty, but then, she always did. That was an Investigator's training for you. The rest of his team were a mess. The few surviving marines were sleeping off sedation down in the med bay, recovering from shock and battle fatigue and exposure to the alien city. Silence felt very much that he would have liked to join them, but there was still work to be done.
    He had a hundred and twenty marines still on board, but he wasn't about to risk them down in the undercity until he had some idea on how to protect them. The battle espers and the Wampyr were all dead. It bothered him that he didn't care as much about their deaths as he did for the marines. He shook his head. He had more important things to think about. Like how Stelmach was getting on with examining the captured Sleeper down in the science lab. Silence raised the Security Officer on his personal screen. The man looked tired and preoccupied.

    "Anything you feel like sharing with us yet, Stelmach?"
    "Not much. The Sleeper is so different from what we normally consider as life that half my instruments won't work on it. What information I am getting is enough to turn your hair white. One thing is becoming clearer all the time. This is a genetically engineered creature: a living killing machine, the perfect warrior class. Almost literally unbeatable on the physical level. We only beat it by cheating."
    "The Ghost Warriors beat them."
    "Yes, but according to the esper, they had weapons and numbers far superior to ours. Shub's always been twenty years ahead of us. If not more. I'll get back to you later, when I've got something more significant to say. Stelmach out."
    His face had only just disappeared from Silence's private screen when the image suddenly cleared, and Silence found himself looking at the stern face of the Imperial Communications Officer on Golgotha. Silence sat up straight in his chair and tried to look alert.
    "Captain Silence, you have new orders. These supercede ail previous orders. You are to leave Officer Stelmach and his captive with the Defiant and proceed immediately to the