Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

possibilities. For the moment, Valentine kept this information to himself. Knowledge is power. He might, at some later date, use this knowledge to control the new Dram, or destroy him. It all depended on how he might feel at the time. Valentine believed in indulging his impulses.
    That thought widened his smile as he looked over at the end result of his last impulse. On a stand, in a glass jar festooned with wires, was all that remained of the distinguished scientist Lionstone had insisted be allowed to observe and assist Valentine in his use of the war machines. Valentine hadn't been fooled for a moment. He knew a spy when he saw one. So he'd taken steps to ensure that while Professor Ignatious Wax would still be able to observe all that happened, he would be in no position to interfere. To be exact, Valentine had had the man decapitated, and now kept the severed head in a glass jar.
    It was wired directly into the command center's comm station, so that it could see all that was going on. It had screamed a lot to begin with, but Valentine just turned off the jar's sound, till it stopped. Mostly it just watched the monitors and sulked now. No doubt Lionstone would have something boring to say about this when she found out, but Valentine was certain he'd be able to talk his way out of any trouble. He always did. And in the meantime, the head made a decorative addition to his command center. He rather enjoyed the way the long white hair and moustaches floated in the jar's preservative fluids, and the way the eyes bulged when it got angry. Besides, Wax had designed most of the war machines Valentine was currently controlling, so there was always the slim chance Wax's knowledge might prove useful.
    "How are you doing. Professor?" Valentine said politely. "Anything I can do for you? Rerun some of the nastier death footage, perhaps?"

    "I take no pleasure in such things," Wax's head said stiffly, through the jar's speaker. "I am not like you. My interest lies only in the performance of my creations."
    "I would never have thought of you as squeamish, Professor," said Valentine.
    "Not after all the thousands of test animals you maimed and mutilated and sent to the animal hereafter while working out the bugs in your delightful machines.
    Think of the unfortunate rebels here as particularly unlucky lab rats."
    "I don't care about them one way or the other," said Wax. "I am completely indifferent to their fate. I merely require to know how my creations are progressing."
    "They're not your machines, Professor. Not any longer. The tech links I provided finally made your machines practical in the field, so the Empress gave them over into my care. Which is why I am in charge, and you are in a jar. Perhaps you'd care to monitor the machines through my tech links?"
    "You know very well I can't understand them! I don't think anyone does, but you.
    Which is in itself rather strange, isn't it, Wolfe? Neither you nor the laboratories you fund has ever produced anything like this before. Which means you must have had help. Outside help. I wonder from whom, eh, Wolfe? Could it be you have to keep your confederates' identity secret, because you know the Empress wouldn't approve? Who have you been making deals with, Wolfe?"
    "You are entering dangerous waters, Professor," Valentine said easily. "I advise you to turn back now, while you still can."
    "Or what? You'll cut my head off and stick it in ajar?"
    "There are worse things that could happen to you," said Valentine. "Trust me on this."
    The head in the jar muttered to itself, then fell silent. It was sulking again.

    Valentine smiled, and sank back into the mental link with the war machines. In a moment, he was a combat android stamping across a plowed field, the weight of his great steel frame driving his metal feet deep into the rutted earth. He reached out with his mind, and was a dozen metal men, and then a hundred, stamping in unison across the wide field. Their feet rose and fell in perfect step, a hundred robots in the shape of men, with but one purpose and one intent, moving as one.
    They marched over the horizon and into a town. Rebels came out to face them, fighting with farm implements and the occasional projectile weapon. Blades and bullets rebounded harmlessly from the metal men, and the robots laid their hands upon the rebels, tearing them limb from limb, breaking their heads and necks with lashing metal flails, and tearing open their guts with jagged metal hooks.
    It was