Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

their black markets. We kill them as fast as we can catch them, but there are always more. What ships we have left over are on patrol, mostly out on the Rim, watching for the insect ships.”
    His face disappeared from the screen, replaced by the familiar sight of an alien ship. It resembled a huge ball of sticky white webbing tangled together, tightly compacted. Weapons and force shields of unfamiliar design were there, unseen. One such ship had murdered every living soul in an isolated Imperial Base, and then almost destroyed Golgotha’s main cities before Captain Silence and his crew destroyed it. No one knew where the alien ship had come from, or what they wanted. The only certainty about the aliens was their murderous intentions. The image of the ship disappeared, replaced by General Beckett again.
    “Given the limited number of ships at my disposal, I cannot risk launching any kind of preemptive strike.
    All I can do is respond to alien attacks, drive the ships off, and then try to clean up the mess they’ve left behind. So far we’ve been lucky enough to avoid the major destruction and slaughter the first ship brought to Golgotha, but luck has a nasty habit of running out. The bottom line is, people are dying out here on the Rim, and there’s damn all I can do about it! I must have more ships!”
    “We’re building them as fast as we can, General,” Gutman said sharply. “But there are difficulties. There won’t be any more E-class ships until we can establish a new stardrive factory to replace the one destroyed in the rebellion. And come up with something to replace the clones who previously performed the dangerous task of actually assembling the drive. And, of course, even D-class ships are horrendously expensive, at a time when every expense has to be weighed and justified. As long as the alien ships don’t pose an immediate threat to the main Empire—“ “You’ll sacrifice the people of the Rim planets to avoid having to raise taxes on everyone else.” Beckett snarled openly at the camera. “Rulers come and rulers go, but nothing really changes. Look, the insects came to Golgotha once, and right now we don’t have anything to stop them making a return visit. We still don’t know where they came from; they just appear
    out of nowhere, make their attack, and then disappear again.”
    “As long as we keep them from getting too annoyed with us, there’s a real chance they will confine their attacks to the Rim,” said Gutman. “A bleak philosophy, I’ll admit, but in these desperate times we have no choice but to think in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number. We are not abandoning the Rim worlds. We authorize you to remain where you are, and give them all the protection you can. As soon as new ships are available, they will be sent to join you. But that’s all I can offer you. Now, unless you have anything else to bring up—“ “As it happens, I do,” said Beckett. “There’s something…
    happening out here on the Rim. Disturbing reports have been coming in from all along the Rim, concerning the Darkvoid. There are reports of… things coming out of the darkness. Voices of the dead crying warnings. Visions of wonders and nightmares, fleeting contacts with things that come and go in a moment. Espers have had dreams of a door opening and closing, and something awful peering through.
    There’ve been too many reports, from normally trustworthy sources, for me to just dismiss them. I am forced to the only logical conclusion. There’s something alive in the Darkvoid.”
    For a long moment everyone was quiet. In the nine hundred and more years since the original Deathstalker used the Darkvoid Device, no one had really learned anything more about the vast area of utter night called the Darkvoid, save that ships which went into it rarely returned. Gutman turned to Owen and Hazel. “Sir Deathstalker, you and Miss d’Ark were the last people to travel deep into the Darkvoid and return. Perhaps you could… shed a little light on this phenomenon?”
    “This is all news to me,” said Owen. “We never encountered anything like that. Just because my ancestor created the Darkvoid Device, it doesn’t mean I’m any more of an expert than anyone else. If Giles kept any secrets about the Darkvoid, he never passed them on to me. But I really don’t see how anyone or anything could be alive in there. There’s nothing left in the Darkvoid to support life. No light, no heat,