Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

population of any planet in the Empire.
    Random’s smile at that fell away as he saw the figures Savage had dug up for him. The Councillors were taking a percentage of Loki’s gross output. Not just a part of the profits, they were creaming money right off the top. They were also pocketing a large percentage of all tax monies, and every other public purse they could get their hands on, and depositing the money in banks on Golgotha. If this continued, the Loki economy would inevitably collapse, though no doubt the Councillors would have arranged their escape long before that became obvious. Savage went from shocked to furious to a cold rage in a few seconds.
    “If the colonists knew about this, they’d drag the Councillors out of their beds and lynch them on the spot. But there’s no way these people could have set this up themselves, sir Random. Someone much higher up has to be covering for them. Someone on Golgotha.”
    “Damn,” said Random. “Maybe I am fighting on the wrong side. If Tallon and Jacks knew about this…
    Look, is there any way we can contact the rebel forces? Secretly? If we could persuade them to settle their grievances through the system, with my support…” “You don’t understand,” said Savage, shutting down his terminal and turning to face Random. “You haven’t seen what they’ve been doing. The rebels fight alongside the Ghost Warriors. They’ve been wiping out the outer settlements—whole towns and villages, murdered down to the last man, woman, and child. Afterward, the rebels help the Ghost Warriors collect the more intact adult bodies so they can be made over into Ghost Warriors. The other bodies… it’s not just Shub that commits atrocities. Let me call up some vid footage we have from their last attack.”
    He activated a viewscreen, and Random and Ruby watched Shub and rebel forces destroy a town with fire and steel and horror. Savage watched their faces more than the screen. He’d already seen the vid footage, and knew he’d never be able to forget it.
    Ghost Warriors went stalking through the street, killing everything that moved that wasn’t them.
    Corpses, with gray and blue skin, metal eyes, and grinning teeth revealed by cracked and rotting lips.
    Some so badly damaged that bones showed through tears in exposed meat, or loops of tattered intestine hung from slashed-open bellies. Computer implants moved servomechanisms in dead limbs, and men and women who had fallen nobly in battle were raised again against their wishes to fight in the name of Shub.
    Terror weapons, horror troops, they could not be hurt, argued with, or stopped. As long as the armored computer implant remained intact, whatever remained of the body would keep going, obeying its merciless orders.
    They stalked their human prey with inhuman patience. Buildings blazed around them, the leaping flames fanned by the endless winds. The living went blade to blade with the dead, to defend their homes or perhaps only to buy time for their loved ones to escape, but they all died in the end. The Ghost Warriors would not stop till all that lived lay still before them, dead as they were. That was how they had been programmed. They dragged the last few women and children from their hiding places and put on a show for the camera, tearing their victims apart with inhuman strength. Afterward, the Ghost Warriors built strange constructions from human pieces, dozens of feet high, with human bones as support and eyeless children’s faces as ornaments. The scene faded away, and the viewscreen shut itself down. Random let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He’d seen his share of death and slaughter and atrocity down the years, but this implacable, mechanical murder chilled his soul. He looked across at Savage.
    “I saw people in there. Humans, not Ghost Warriors. They were killing too, and looting. Rebels?”
    “That’s right,” said Savage. “They’re a part of everything that happens. That village was called Trawl.
    Population maybe five hundred. I had family there. They’re all dead now. Trawl didn’t even have any strategic value, but the rebels destroyed it anyway. Just because it was there. And they killed everyone to send us a message: that there was nothing they wouldn’t do, and that there was nothing we could do to stop them. I lost all that remained of my family in Trawl. There’s nobody else. I am the last of my line,
    and my name dies with me.” “Yeah,” said