Deathstalker 02 - Deathstalker Rebellion

wore no clothes, but they didn't feel the cold. They didn't feel anything unless the Empress permitted it.
    Mind techs had stirred their sticky fingers in the maids' brains until nothing remained there but unquestioning obedience to the Empress. They would die to protect her. Or kill, as required. They were cunning, deadly fighters, with hidden implanted weaponry. They were silent because they had no tongues, and they perceived the world only through grafted cybernetic senses. Their fingers had steel claws. They clustered together at the base of the Iron Throne, glaring at the courtiers, waiting eagerly to be unleashed on anyone foolish enough to
    displease their mistress. But for once, not even they were enough to hold the courtiers' gaze. Beside the Throne, standing a little to one side in the swirling snow, huge and awful, stood a yoked Grendel alien.
    On the planet called Grendel, genetically engineered creatures lay sleeping in deep-buried vaults. Thousands upon thousands of them, an army waiting for an enemy that never came. The alien civilization that created them was long gone, but their work lived on. Unstoppable killing machines, living weapons, programmed to fight on until either they or the enemy was destroyed. An Empire exploratory team made the mistake of opening one of the ancient vaults, and the Sleepers emerged in a fury of blood and slaughter. They wiped out all the team and overran the exploratory camp on the surface in a matter of minutes. Hundreds of men and women died screaming, their weapons useless, and not one Grendel fell. In the end they had no starships, so were trapped on the planet's surface.
    The Empress gave the order for the planet's surface to be scorched from orbit, and that was the end of the Grendels. Except for those still sleeping in the vaults deep below. Lionstone put the planet under quarantine, and left starcruisers there to enforce it.
    But faced with the threat of unknown alien foes massing against the Empire, Lionstone had conceived of a new plan: to waken and control the Grendels and use them as shock troops. And now here one stood, a thick cybernetic yoke gleaming on its shoulders, controlling the creature's thoughts. Theoretically. Everyone eyed the Grendel warily and hoped fervently that this time the scientists had got all the bugs out in advance. The Grendel alien stood nine feet tall, in spiked crimson silicon armor that was somehow a part of it. It had vicious fangs and claws and was roughly humanoid in shape, but its large heart-shaped face had nothing even remotely like a human expression. Just one of the creatures had
    wiped out a whole company of Silence's men when he went down to the vaults to capture and control the aliens, before he brought it down, as much by luck as anything. And now here one was in Court, with only a prototype yoke holding back its perpetual killing rage.
    More than ever Silence wished he had his weapons with him. Or at least some idea which way the exit was. The courtiers studied the Grendel silently and were not happy. They understood the need for increased security at Court, after previous attacks by both aliens and elves, but a personal Grendel on a leash was going a bit far, even for Lionstone. This had gone beyond safety or style and headed firmly in the direction of overkill. Possibly literally. Those at the front of the crowd were seized with a sudden polite wish for others to take up their privileged vantage point and attempted to fade back into the crowd. The rank behind them were having none of this and resisted strongly. If the yoke should fail, everyone knew better than to think the armed guards would try to protect them. That wasn't what they were there for. The courtiers somehow managed to stir rebelliously in complete silence. Frost leaned in close beside Stelmach, who jumped slightly. Frost didn't smile.
    "I thought you said you were the only one with a yoked Grendel. And that one was destroyed on Haden. So what's this doing here?"
    "Apparently, research has moved on in my absence," said Stelmach, his voice little more than a whisper, trying to talk without moving his lips so as to avoid drawing attention to himself. Frost frowned heavily.
    "Just how dependable is that yoke?"
    "Depends what you mean by dependable. Unless they've made some major breakthrough, which I strongly doubt, the yoke is strictly on/off. Once the
    Grendel's been unleashed it will kill anything it sees. The best you can hope to do is make sure it's