Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

detect anything, and espers just get really bad headaches when they try to listen in. The constructs are our only way of communicating with them, and they tell us as little as they can get away with."
    "What about the scientists at the Base?"
    "They spend most of their time trying to get themselves transferred somewhere else, and I don't blame them one bit. This place gives me the creeps."
    Silence kept his features under control, but it was a near thing. He couldn't have been more surprised if the Investigator had admitted to secret pacifist leanings. For Frost to admit that the place made her feel uncomfortable, it must really be getting to her. And that wasn't like Frost at all. He decided to do them both a favor and change the subject.
    "Did you know the chemicals we supply these insects with are addictive?"

    "No," said Frost, "but it makes sense. If the insects are a single hive mind, they're scattered far too widely for us to be able to hurt or control them. But withholding chemicals to which they've developed a dependency should do the trick nicely. A junkie will do anything for his next fix."
    "Very efficient," said Silence. "But then, the Empire's always been a great believer in efficiency. And if it can work a little cruelty into the deal, too, so much the better." He looked around him at the thousands of small scuttling forms, working blindly and obediently in the blistering heat to meet the Empire's needs. If he saw any connection between them and him, he kept it to himself.
    Chroma XIII was a singular planet, in more ways than one. The original survey ship almost missed it completely, as technically it should have been impossible for any form of life to survive in a planet so far from its burned-out, dying sun. But something about Chroma XIII caught the Captain's eye, and he sent down drones to gather information. And what they sent back was enough to make even a seasoned survey officer's jaw drop. Within the giant gas ball that was Chroma XIII, there was life without form or substance. Intelligence separated from physical existence. A planet of inherent contradictions, whose very existence was theoretically impossible.
    Silence kept the Dauntless in as high an orbit as he could get away with, and he and Frost watched the main viewscreen as the ship's drones dropped toward the impossible planet. Strange images came and went on the viewscreen as the scene switched from one drone's instruments to another, and all the time the comm channels threatened to overload on the sheer intensity of what they were relaying.
    There was no planetary surface, no solid area at all, and the drones dropped
    endlessly through shades of color and fields of light, blindingly bright, in which strange hues shifted and stirred without any purpose or meaning that could be fathomed by human eyes. There were planes of dazzling color, separate and distinct and thousands of miles long, and whirlpools the size of moons, blending slowly from one color to another, and oceans of blue mists as dark as the color you see when you close your eyes at night. And everywhere, the colors and the shapes and the shades were shot through with sudden blasts of lightning that came and went almost too fast for the human eye to follow.
    "And these flashes of lightning are the aliens?" Silence said finally.
    "We think so," said Frost. "It's hard to be sure of anything here. Certainly the lightning bolts share some of the attributes we associate with life. They react to outside influences, they consume light on some wavelengths and release it in others, and they appear to communicate with each other, though our translation computers have had nervous breakdowns trying to make sense of it. They reproduce constantly, and they also disappear suddenly, for no discernible reason."
    "All right," said Silence, determined not to be completely thrown. "How do we communicate with them?"
    "We don't," said Frost. "We're not even sure they know we're here, which might just be for the best. Why give them ideas?"
    Silence looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "And the Empire's content to just leave them be?"
    "Pretty much. They don't have anything we want, let alone need."
    "So what the hell are we doing here?" said Silence.
    "Keeping an eye on them. We have no way of knowing what they're capable of.
    They're life without form, which could also be life without limits, as we
    understand them. Who knows what they might do if they became aware of us? If they decided to leave