Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

through Hell so he could escape to warn Humanity. They had to be told the truth. Only the certainty that he hadn’t
    been told all he needed to know kept Daniel from trying to bolt. That, and his father.
    “There have always been human contacts with Shub,” said Jacob. “It started with Alistair Campbell, who left messages in ingenious places, suggesting ways in which we might cooperate to mutual profit. The AIs didn’t give a damn for profits, but they saw the advantage in cultivating human traitors. So in return for useful strategic information, the AIs gave Clan Campbell beads and trinkets, high tech that Shub had already moved beyond. After Clan Wolfe destroyed the Campbells, Valentine took over the connection.
    The AIs approved of Valentine. A wonderfully amoral creature, never bothered by a single shred of conscience. Now he’s no longer a man of influence, Shub may have to go back to the Campbells. Finlay perhaps, or Robert. It doesn’t matter who. There are always things that humans want, or think they need, that their own society doesn’t approve of. It’s in the nature of Humanity to hold the seeds of its own destruction. Pity about Valentine, though. He was so very… sympathetic.” “You could never stand Valentine, Daddy. You hated everything about him.” “That was when I was alive. It’s amazing what death can do to change the way you see things. And you must admit that Valentine was very efficient in his destruction of Virimonde. The AIs helped him do that. One day they’ll do what he did to every human world. That is your species’ future; a metal hand at every flesh throat, a steel foot stamping on a human face. Humanity crushed beneath the weight of machines. The time is growing closer, boy. Already Furies walk undetected in every human city, and Shub minds watch through human eyes, having taken control of flesh bodies via the central Computer Matrix. The AIs have agents everywhere. Nothing is hidden from them.” “They even have access to one of Humanity’s greatest champions,” said Young Jack Random, still smiling his remorseless smile. “He made a very unfortunate mistake, and now we have access to everything he does. The great hero of the rebellion, an unwitting spy of Shub. Just as you will be.” “Like hell!” flared Daniel, glaring at the Fury. “I might be willing to make some kind of deal to get my father back, but I’d never do anything to endanger the Empire, not even for him. He wouldn’t expect me to.
    My father has always been an honorable man. Right, Daddy?”
    “I’m not your father,” said the dead man. “Jacob Wolfe is dead. I’m just another machine for Shub to speak through. I was never more than bait, bait in a trap to lure you here. Luckily for us, you were never a very complicated person. Given the right prods and pushes, you did everything we expected of you.”
    Metal tentacles erupted out of the surrounding walls, wrapping Daniel up in a moment. He struggled futilely as the tentacles pinned his arms to his sides, and then stopped as the tentacles contracted sharply, crushing him, forcing the air from his lungs. He hung limply, all the fight knocked out of him. “That’s better,” said the Ghost Warrior with Jacob Wolfe’s face. “Time to wrap things up.”
    “Don’t let them do this to me, Daddy,” said Daniel, his voice little more than a whisper.
    “Your daddy isn’t here,” said the Ghost Warrior. “He never was. Now, pay attention. We want you to know and understand what we are going to do to you, and what you in turn will do for us. Human despair never ceases to amuse us. Explain it, Random.”
    “Remember I told you that I went to Vodyanoi IV?” said Young Jack Random cheerfully. “My involvement with the rebellion there was just a cover. My only real interest was in using the chaos of a rebellion to get me close to a particular hidden scientific Base. In what they thought was utter secrecy, some of the Empire’s foremost scientific minds were undertaking forbidden research into nanotech.
    Building technology at the molecular level. Such science has been banned throughout the Empire for centuries, ever since the first real experiments got so dreadfully out of hand on Zero Zero. We have experimented, very cautiously, with nanotech ourselves, but the secret of its successful application continued to evade us. Imagine our surprise when word reached us from one of our pet traitors that the Empire had made a major