Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

said Jack kindly. “We’re becoming new people, moving apart, whether we want to or not. Strangers become friends, become strangers again. That’s life.”
    They talked a while longer, but they’d already run out of things to say. Jack and Ruby left. Owen stared into his glass. Hazel watched him do it. “There’s something I have to tell you,” Owen said finally. “I’m getting married.”
    Hazel’s pulse jumped, but she kept her voice and face calm. “Oh, yes? Anyone I know?”
    “Constance Wolfe. It’s an arranged marriage.”
    “I thought that kind of thing disappeared with the aristocracy.” “They’re not really gone,” said Owen.
    “And some of the old ways are still… valid.”
    “It all seems… very sudden,” said Hazel.
    “It took me by surprise,” Owen admitted. “It was all Constance’s idea. She had good reasons. I couldn’t say no.”
    “You always were easily talked into things. Do you… love her?”
    “No! I hardly know her. But then, that’s often the way with arranged marriages. I would have had to marry someone eventually. Someone of my class. It’s the bloodlines, you see…” “No,” said Hazel. “I don’t see. But congratulations, anyway. I suppose she’ll be Empress to your Emperor.”
    “I didn’t want that either. But it seems… politically necessary. I can’t say no.
    Not when so many of the alternatives would be so much worse.”
    “We could run away,” said Hazel, looking into Owen’s eyes for the first time. “Leave this whole mess behind us. It would be just like the old times again—you and me, running from the Empire, nothing and no one to care about but ourselves.”
    “It’s tempting,” said Owen. “But I can’t. It’s duty, you see. I’ve always understood duty. In the end, there are things more important than our happiness. And you never did say you loved me.”
    “No,” said Hazel. “I never did.”
    They both waited a long time, but neither of them had anything more to say. So they sat together in the tavern, drinking their drinks, and trying to see their way through the darkening future ahead of them.

Chapter 3
    Shub
    Daniel Wolfe passed through the dead, empty space of the Forbidden Sector in a stolen ship, heading for the cold metal hell that was Shub. He was alone and he was scared, but he wouldn’t even let himself think of turning back. He had to go to Shub. That was where his father, Jacob, was, and his father needed him. Even if the old man was dead.
    Perhaps especially then. Jacob Wolfe had died during the last great battle between the Wolfes and the Campbells, a bloody affair that had ended in the destruction of Clan Campbell. It had been a great victory, a triumphant end to a centuries-old feud, but Jacob hadn’t lived to see it—cut down by an unseen hand in the midst of battle.
    A good death for an old warrior, many said, as though that was a comfort. Daniel had mourned his late father, for many reasons, but more or less got over it. Until Jacob’s missing body turned up in Lionstone’s Court one day, standing on its own two feet, bearing a message for the Empress from the rogue AIs of Shub. Somehow they had obtained the missing corpse and rebuilt it into a Ghost Warrior, a metal presence within a human frame, run by computer implants. Shub spoke through its mouth, but Daniel had seen traces of his late father’s personality in the Ghost Warrior, even though everyone else said that was impossible, and he had finally abandoned his Family and his beloved sister Stephanie to find the truth.
    That meant crossing the dreaded Forbidden Sector to the unknown world of the rogue AIs, to Shub.
    Even though those who went there never came back alive. There wasn’t much in the Forbidden Sector.
    A few planets too far from the norm to be worth terraforming, a handful of dying suns, and a hell of a lot of space. Cold, empty, silent space. There was no comm traffic this far out on the Rim, no voices to fill the endless dark as Daniel’s stolen ship pressed on. He felt very alone, so far from everyone and everything he knew, and he hated it. He’d never had to be alone before. For as long as he could remember, Stephanie had always been there, fiercely protective, doing all the thinking for both of them.
    Above and beyond that, their father had made all the important decisions, surrounding his youngest son with the security of perfectly planned days. And when Stephanie or Jacob weren’t around, there was always the