Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

Frost.
    "Inhuman, perhaps."
    Frost shrugged as best she could inside her suit. "Humanity's overrated sometimes."
    Silence was still trying to come up with an answer to that, which didn't involve raising his voice, when Stelmach's voice sounded in his ear again. The Security Officer sounded very upset.
    "Captain! There are Ghost Warriors all over the ship! Hundreds of them!"
    "Tell me something I don't know," said Silence. "Are we holding our own against
    them?"
    "Barely. We're afraid to use our disrupters much, but they're not. The largest group is heading for the bridge, despite everything we can do to slow them down.
    We've only got one chance. From my work with controlling the Grendel aliens, I'm pretty sure the computers controlling the Ghost Warriors must have a central control mechanism, separate from the bodies it moves. Some mechanism they brought with them when they teleported over from the Champion. A single cybernetic mind running its meat puppets. I've had Communications scanning the comm channels for unauthorized transmissions, and we've detected one hell of a powerful signal coming from the main hangars in Epsilon section. That's got to be it."
    "Good work, Stelmach," said Silence. "The Investigator and I are on our way.
    Send as many men as you can after us. If we fail, defend the bridge till it's obvious there's no hope, and then hit the self-destruct. Whatever happens, this ship and its crew is not to fall under Shub's control."
    "Understood, Captain. Good luck."
    He broke contact, and Silence and Frost headed for the elevators.
    "If I didn't know better," said Frost, "I'd swear he's becoming almost human."
    "He says much the same about you," said Silence.
    They discarded their cumbersome hard suits for greater speed and made their way down to the Epsilon hangars without much trouble. The Dauntless was a much bigger ship than the Champion, and the Ghost Warriors were spread thin, trying to cover too many areas at once. Silence and Frost cut them down when they had to and avoided the rest. They didn't want the enemy to know they were coming.
    There were a dozen entryways into the Epsilon hangar area, and only a few of them were signposted. Silence and Frost used one of the least obvious and
    emerged onto a high narrow walkway overlooking the bay without anyone knowing they were there. Some fifty feet below, the Ghost Warriors had cleared a space among the piled-up supply crates, and now a dozen dead men holding disrupters stood guard over an intricate glass and crystal mechanism that glowed with an uncomfortably bright light. Silence pursed his lips thoughtfully and glanced at Frost.
    "Even with our new abilities, there's no way we can get to that device without being seen or heard, and that many disrupters makes me nervous. Even if they don't hit us, they could hit the hull. We could wait for reinforcements, but with all that cover to hide behind, they could hold off a small army indefinitely. And we are running out of time."
    "If you can distract them," said Frost, "I can blast that device with my disrupter."
    Silence raised an eyebrow. "From here?"
    "Of course."
    Silence thought about it, but shook his head. "No. Odds are it's protected by a force Screen of some kind. I would. And if you fire and fail, we'll have given away our position for nothing. I've got another idea."
    Frost looked at him. "This doesn't involve us throwing ourselves away in a grand gesture, does it? I've already tried that, and I wasn't too keen about it the first time."
    "This is simpler. I'm suggesting we use our minds for a change. It's not just our bodies that were changed in the Madness Maze. The strain or excesses of nearly dying on the Champion seem to have pushed me another step up the ladder.
    You, too, probably. We're more than we were. Listen. Concentrate. Can you hear
    what I'm hearing?"
    Frost frowned, listening. The hangar bay was quiet, the Ghost Warriors standing silently on guard. In the stillness she could hear Silence's breathing and her own, and then, very quietly below it all, she sensed as much as heard a low pulsing that rose and fell in sudden spikes. And inside that sound, which wasn't really a sound, she could hear a voice murmuring, cold and inhuman and horribly perfect.
    "Damn," said Frost. "It's the machine. I can hear it thinking. Giving orders.
    It's not a language or any computer code that I'm familiar with, but somehow I can still understand it. This is the signal Stelmach detected from the