Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

bridge, the voice that pulls the Ghost Warriors' strings."
    "Yes," said Silence. "It is. Apparently, we're becoming espers, along with everything else. But we can do more than listen. Frost. We can hurt it.
    Concentrate on the link between us."
    He reached out clumsily to her with his mind, and she came to him. Their thoughts mixed and meshed, jumbling together, and then suddenly they both came into focus, sharp and brilliant, and their minds slammed together and merged to become a whole that was far greater than the sum of its parts. It leapt up and out from the cramped confines of their bodies and struck at the thinking machine in a lightning flash of roaring energies. The force field didn't even slow it.
    The machine howled horribly, feeling its destruction without ever knowing what or how, and then its center shattered into a million quiescent pieces, and collapsed upon itself. The Ghost Warriors fell to the floor and lay still, not even twitching. Their mind was dead. The mind that had been Silence and Frost split apart, and they fell back into their bodies. Their minds slowed, weighed down by flesh again, and they both immediately began to forget what it had been
    like to be more than human. They had to, or they would lose being human forever.
    And they weren't ready to do that, just yet. They stood staring at each other for a long moment.
    "We can't tell anyone about this," Silence said finally. "You know what they'd do to us."
    "We have a duty to inform our superiors," said Frost. "Perhaps by examining us, they could find a way to duplicate the process."
    "More likely they'd kill us, by taking us apart to see what makes us tick. It wasn't a human technology that changed us, made us what we are. And besides, Lionstone would order us destroyed the moment she heard about us. She'd never allow anything as powerful as us to exist in her Empire.
    "We don't have to decide right now. We can talk about it later. For the moment, how are we going to explain what happened here?"
    "No problem," said Frost. She drew her disrupter and blew apart what was left of the control mechanism, leaving nothing but a scorch mark on the steel floor.
    Frost put her disrupter away again. "A lucky shot. As simple as that."
    "Show-off," said Silence, and activated his comm implant. "Bridge, this is the Captain. Status report, please. The Ghost Warriors are down, right?"
    "I don't know how you did it," said Stelmach, "but according to the reports coming in, the Ghost Warriors just collapsed and gave up the ghost all over the ship. It's over, and we won. Amazing. I wouldn't have bet on it. I may faint."
    "Try to hang on till we get back to the bridge," said Silence. "You did well, Stelmach. If you hadn't theorized a central control device and tracked it down, they'd probably have been scooping our brains out with dull spoons by now.
    You're a hero, just like the rest of your family."

    "Some hero. I didn't volunteer to go over to the Champion with you."
    "There are different kinds of heroes," said Silence. "What's important is that you came through when it mattered. Silence out."
    Silence and Frost leaned on the walkway railing together, looking down into the hangar bay. The Ghost Warriors still hadn't moved. Silence kept an eye on them anyway, just in case.
    "I thought we were heading back to the bridge," said Frost.
    "In a minute," said Silence. "After all we've been through, I think we're entitled to a short break to get our breath back."
    "We do lead an interesting life," said Frost. "At least this time we didn't lose the ship."
    "Right," said Silence. "I think we're finally getting the hang of this hero thing." He thought for a moment and then looked at Frost. "Do you really think those voices we heard at the beginning were part of the Shub trap?"
    "Of course," said Frost. "What else could they have been?"
    Silence shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. It's just… they seemed to be warning us, as much as anything."
    "But if they didn't come from the Champion, where did they come from?"
    "I don't know. On the whole, I'd rather not think about it. The implications are too disturbing."
    "Ah, hell," said Frost. "Everyone knows it gets strange out here on the Rim."

Chapter 7
    The Circles of Hell
    The monitor screen spun a few fractals as its memory warmed up, and then the flaring colors resolved into a sharp holo image. A bleak, metallic horizon, crenellated here and there with shadowy trenches, deep craters, and looming
    hills of metal