Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

could think of was making the Ghost Warriors pay for Frost's death. He'd build a mountain of heads in her name. She'd like that. But it wouldn't be enough. It would never be enough. He took the elevator down to the next level, clenching and unclenching his hands impatiently. The doors opened to sounds of chaos not far away. There were shouts and screams and the sound of energy weapons discharging. That last brought him out of the elevator in a run. They weren't too far from the outer hull in Delta section, and all it would take was one really unlucky shot to puncture the hull. Explosive decompression probably wouldn't bother the Ghost Warriors much, but it would play hell with everyone else. Silence was suddenly very glad he'd kept his hard suit on.
    He rounded a corner and came upon a heaving mob of human defenders, struggling to contain a large group of Ghost Warriors. There were wounded and unmoving bodies sprawled everywhere, but in the midst of the living dead men, holding their attention almost single-handedly, was a defiant figure in a battered hard suit, swinging a long sword with both hands. Silence grinned so hard it hurt. He didn't need to see the suit's colors to know who was behind that featureless helmet. No wonder he'd still been able to feel her presence. When the Ghost Warriors teleported their people off the Champion, they'd brought Frost with
    them! Probably unwilling to give up such an important specimen. Silence roared his Clan's battle cry and threw himself into the heart of the battle, hacking left and right with vicious sweeping arcs. He cut a path through the dead, unfeeling flesh, laughing as he went, until he was able to put his back against that of the armored figure. They fought well and fiercely, and the Ghost Warriors couldn't get anywhere near them.
    "Hi," said Frost's voice in his ear. "Miss me?"
    "Not for a minute," said Silence. "I knew you were too cussed to die."
    "That is what it was all about, you know," the Investigator said casually in between blows. "Use the Champion to pull us in, distract us with strange voices, and then take over the Dauntless. With you and I as Ghost Warriors, carefully preserved and disguised, Shub could have used us to get in striking range of the Empress herself. Which is presumably why they saved me when the Champion went up. Crafty inhuman bastards. I'm quite impressed."
    Silence was too busy to reply. Captain Pearce had turned up again, his head still at an angle, but as determined as ever. He had an old-fashioned disrupter in his hand, but Silence slapped it out of his grasp with a swift, casual movement. The two Captains went head to head, the living and the dead, swords soaring as they slammed together and sprang away, inhumanly fast. Pearce had a strength and speed beyond anything a living man could normally produce, but Silence had been changed in the Madness Maze, and he wasn't merely human anymore, either. The hard suit's servomechanisms strained to keep up with him as he swept aside Pearce's attack and defenses alike and dueled him to a standstill. He lifted his sword and brought it down in one blindingly swift movement, and the heavy blade hammered into Pearce's skull, sinking deep into his head till it finally jarred to a halt on an eyesocket. Pearce convulsed as
    his sundered computer implant crashed and fell apart. Silence jerked his sword free, and Pearce fell twitching to the floor.
    There were still more Ghost Warriors. Silence fought on, back-to-back with Frost, cool and calm and quite collected. Strength and speed burned within him, and he felt like he could fight forever. He was linked with Frost again, on every physical and mental level, fighting in that calm twilight state when the sum of the two of them was far greater than their separate parts. And suddenly, there was no one left to fight. The Ghost Warriors lay broken and decapitated all around, and the surviving crew members were wildly cheering their Captain and their Investigator. Which had to be something of a first for Frost, Silence thought as he looked serenely around him. Usually, people cheered Investigators only when they were leaving. He turned to look at Frost, who had turned at the same moment to look at him. They reached up and took off their helmets, and their eyes met in a moment of understanding and appreciation that could never be unsaid or forgotten.
    "We're not even breathing hard," Silence said quietly. "What are we becoming?"
    "Better," said