Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

missing, and my thoughts slam up against walls I didn't even know were there. I don't think I'm who I thought I was." He looked out of the screen. "I'm sorry.
    I'm so sorry. But I think I'm just the smile on the face of the tiger."
    And then he screamed, horribly, as the energy half of his body ate the human half, consuming the flesh inch by inch until the screams finally stopped because there wasn't enough left of the lung to support them. The single eye stared mutely out of the half face until it too was gone, and then there was only a spitting and crackling energy shape left on the bridge of the Fleet's flagship.
    Its shape was nothing like a man. General Beckett drew his disrupter and shot the thing at point-blank range, but it had no effect. As he stood there, helpless, a voice was heard, on the bridge and in Parliament; a deafening, awful sound, that had nothing human in it.
    We are the Recreated. We have left the dark to destroy the light. It is our time, come round at last. Our long-awaited revenge begins… now.
    The energy shape thrust its glowing hand into General Beckett's chest and ripped out his heart. And even as Beckett's body slumped to the bloodied deck, the energy shape turned to the control panels and hit the Emergency Destruct,
    blowing up the flagship. The viewscreen went black, and for a long moment it was very quiet in Parliament…
    They might have got over the shock, and started making some kind of decisions, but the worst wasn't over yet. There was a frenzied pounding on the closed and locked main doors, from the other side. Heads slowly turned to look, and Robert gestured to the nearest guards to unlock the doors. They did so, and Toby Shreck came storming in with Flynn at his heels.
    "We know who the carrier is for the nano plague!" he shouted immediately. "The name was in Gutman's files! It's Daniel Wolfe!"
    And Daniel Wolfe, who had escaped detection by the espers because he honestly didn't know he was a traitor, screamed the howl of the damned as his memories came crashing back, and he remembered his trip to Shub, and what they had down to him there. He remembered his trips to all the other planets Shub had infected, and all the people he'd touched and unknowingly condemned to death.
    And even as he screamed his sanity away, deeply buried Shub programming took over and sent him running for the open doors, throwing people out of his way.
    Guards opened fire with bullets and energy blasts, but none of them stopped him, the nanotech within him repairing all his wounds instantly. In a moment he was gone, and only the vestige of his despairing screams remained, echoing around the silent Parliament.

Chapter 3
    Zero Zero
    Captain John Silence sat slumped in his command chair on the bridge of the Dauntless, studying the enigmatic image of the planet Zero Zero on the main viewscreen, and felt very much like throwing something heavy and sharp-edged at the screen. The Dauntless had been heading toward the Rim, and then the
    Darkvoid, until a last-minute course change from Parliament had brought them here; to the one planet in the Empire possibly more dangerous than the endless night of the Darkvoid. Zero Zero; the planet no one comes home from. Under strict Quarantine for centuries, ever since the nanotech got loose. There could be anything down there. Anything at all. Parliament hoped there was a cure for the nano plague, and had sent Silence and his crew to look for it. No one asked what they thought about it. Silence sniffed sourly, and dug into his bowl with his chopsticks. He didn't normally eat on the bridge—it encouraged sloppiness and divided attention—but he couldn't risk leaving the bridge now they were actually here. The planet looked quite pretty from orbit, like a pastel-colored rose with hidden poisonous thorns. Silence chewed manfully at his reconstituted meal, and tried hard not to think what it was reconstituted from. It was better than protein cubes, but only just.
    Zero Zero, a planet so dangerous even Shub stayed well clear of it. The place where Empire science had been allowed to run mad, meddling with the wellsprings of creation itself. But Silence and his crew had a reputation for dealing with impossibly dangerous situations and surviving, and when all was said and done they were still considered expendable, so here they were. There should have been another starcruiser here, standing guard to enforce the Quarantine, but with ships at a premium it had long ago been