Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

until finally Random pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
    "Good night, people. My left foot has gone to sleep, and I'd like to catch up with it as soon as possible. Get as much rest as you can before we have to leave. I have a strong feeling it'll be some time before we get another chance to rest."
    He nodded to them vaguely, turned, and left the kitchen. Ruby Journey grabbed a half-full bottle of wine and went after him. Hazel nodded briefly to Owen and left as quickly as she could without it seeming strange. She didn't dare talk to him. She might blurt out the truth. If anyone would understand, it would be Owen. But she couldn't take the chance, and so she left the kitchen without looking back and went to her quarters alone. Giles and Owen sat looking at each other across the table.
    "I'm sorry we're having to part so soon, ancestor," said Owen. "We've hardly had a chance to get to know each other."
    "I know you're a true Deathstalker," said Giles. "That's all that really matters. You're a good fighter—for an historian. Is there… anything you'd like to ask me?"
    "Well," said Owen, "I have been wondering… why do you wear your hair in a scalplock? I mean, that's the sign of a mercenary soldier."

    "Yes," said Giles. "It is. The Empire I remember is gone now, just a memory. The Emperor I swore to serve is long dead. Things haven't turned out at all how I expected. You always hope the future will be better, and your descendants will have an easier time than you had, but I saw the rot setting in, even then. And nothing's changed in the last nine hundred years, except for the worse. At least I've lived long enough to see the beginnings of a rebuilding. I'm no longer Warrior Prime. That was taken from me long ago, and so I became a fighter for other people's causes. Just like now. I'm a mercenary, Owen. Nothing more. Hence the scalplock. I always did have a weakness for the dramatic gesture. Are you sure there's nothing you'd like to talk to me about before we have to part?"
    Owen shifted uncomfortably on his chair. Ever since Giles had killed his son Dram, he'd been trying to be a father figure to Owen, but Owen didn't want or need another father. He still had enough problems over how he felt about his actual father. So in the end the two men just smiled and nodded to each other, and went off in their different directions to get what rest they could before their separate journeys.
    Two Deathstalkers, bound by blood and honor, guilt and perhaps a little feeling.
    Heroes of the forthcoming rebellion. Who had no way of knowing to what dark end destiny would eventually bring them.

Chapter 6
    Voices in the Dark
    It gets strange out on the Rim. The starship Dauntless hammered through the darkness, a small silver speck in the long night. Captain John Silence sat in his command chair on the Dauntless's bridge, staring somberly at the main viewscreen before him. Not that there was much to see on the viewscreen. This latest tour of duty had brought him right to the edge of the Rim, where the
    normality of suns and planets and life gave way to the endless empty dark of the Darkvoid, which knew nothing of light and life. Except for the Wolfling World, whose mysterious depths held an army of reborn Hadenmen and the beginnings of a new rebellion. Silence's mouth flattened into a grim line. He'd been driven from that world in failure and disgrace, but even so he was in no hurry to return there in search of revenge. Unnatural powers had manifested in the dim vast caverns below that planet's surface, forces and events almost beyond human comprehension. Forces that had touched and tainted him, too. The Wolfling World was a dangerous place, and Silence had decided very firmly that he wasn't going back there without the entire Imperial Fleet to back him up. He knew the difference between courage and a suicide mission. It was essential that the rebellion gestating inside the Wolfling World be damped out and eradicated, but until he could convince the Empress of that, Silence had every intention of keeping a safe distance between him and the only living planet in the Darkvoid.
    He sighed and shifted position yet again in his chair. He'd been on the bridge ten hours now, well past the end of his watch, but there was no point in standing down. He couldn't rest, and he couldn't sleep. Too many things had been happening recently. Disturbing things. His mission had seemed straightforward enough when Lionstone outlined it for him: