Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

hear in this room cannot be repeated to anyone, on penalty of death?"
    "Yes, sir. Of course. What did you want to talk to me about, sir?"
    "My past. Who I used to be. When I was still just a man like any other, and my name was Vincent Fast. That used to be a joke; that I was fast enough getting into trouble, but rarely fast enough to get out of it. That turned out to be true in the end, but no one tells the joke anymore. They wouldn't dare. Wasn't much of a joke in the first place. I like to talk to people now and again, in private. It helps me keep track of how human I still am. I'm always afraid that I'm losing what's left of my humanity; that once I reach a certain point I won't notice or care anymore. You won't have noticed, but every day there's just a little less of my human side and that much more of my energy side. Takes a computer to measure the process accurately, but it's there. I'm losing myself, bit by bit. I've still got a fair amount of time ahead of me, unless the process decides to accelerate for some reason. But what's left of me isn't that human anyway.
    "I don't eat or drink anymore. Cold and heat don't bother me. I'm a lot older than I have any right to be. The energy construct keeps me alive when I should have died long ago.
    And sometimes I wonder what the aliens had in mind, that they needed me to live for so long. I've tried to kill myself more than once, but I can't do it. My
    energy half won't let me. That's why I'm talking to you now. Investigator. If in your opinion the energy half is taking control of me, overriding my humanity, I want you to kill me. Destroy my human half completely, with sustained disrupter fire. That should do it. I'm asking you because you're one of the few people on this planet capable of doing the job, because I trust your judgment… and because you have your grandfather's eyes. He was a good man. He would have killed me if he'd thought it necessary. How about you?"
    "If that's what you need," Shoal said slowly. "I can't argue with your logic.
    You'd make a hell of a threat to the Empire if you got out of control. Lionstone would have me killed for depriving her of your talents, but that's my problem.
    I'm an Investigator, and I've always taken my oath seriously. My life for humanity. If you're in such a talking mood, sir, can you tell me anything about the aliens who changed you? The official reports aren't very helpful. Even the ones only open to Investigators."
    "For a long time I didn't remember anything," said Half A Man. His voice was very quiet, and he didn't look at her. "Perhaps because I didn't want to. Then I started to remember things in my dreams. Of late the dreams have come more often, and I remember more of them. I don't know if that means anything. I hope not. All I do know for sure is that they're still out there, somewhere. Waiting.
    "Forget the official, tidied-up story. This is what really happened. Their ship appeared out of nowhere. Huge and vast, dwarfing us like an ant next to a mountain. Its shape made no sense. We tried to talk to it, and it opened up with weapons of a kind we'd never encountered before. Blew our shields away like they were nothing and blew the ship apart. Only took a few seconds. The lucky ones died in the explosions. The rest of my crew died trying to breathe vacuum. And I woke up in the belly of the alien ship, strapped to an operating table. There
    was no sign of any aliens. Machines reached down, with long slender blades and other tools, for cutting and lifting and breaking. They opened me up to see how I worked, digging through my guts as the blood spurted. I screamed, but no one listened. I wanted to die, but the machines wouldn't let me.
    "I don't know how long it went on. Seemed like forever. I went crazy more than once, but the machines brought me back. Until finally I was allowed to pass out, and when I woke up only half of me was left. My left side was intact, not even a scar, but my right side was an energy construct in human form. It obeyed my every thought, but I couldn't feel it. It wasn't mine. Not really. The restraining straps disappeared, and I got up off the table. With no trace anywhere of all the blood I'd spilled, I left the room and walked out into the ship itself.
    "It was huge, none of it on a human scale. There were shapes and structures, but none of them made any sense. There was technology, machines everywhere, but I couldn't understand what they did, or what they'd been designed for.