Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

till I have to." He hit the lock release on
    his control panels, and the inner airlock door cycled open. "Right. This is how we're going to do it, just like we practiced. You all go into the lock. I shut the inner door and open the outer. You power up your individual shields, pray, and then jump. Your personal shields are programmed to phase you through the outer shields without me having to lower them. Theoretically. No one's ever tried this before. If it doesn't work, feel free to come back and complain through a spirit board. Don't you just love being pioneers? Knew I should have held out for danger money."
    "How far is the drop to the ground?" said Silence.
    "Good question, Captain," said the pilot. "Wish I had a good answer for you. If the ground is still where it's supposed to be, we should be hovering some two or three feet above it. But since this is the world where nanos rule, God alone knows what you're dropping into. Still, your shields should protect you. From most things. Anything more I can do to cheer you up?"
    "Yeah," said Silence. "You can keep your ears open in orbit, and come and get us the hell out of here the minute I call you."
    He led his team into the airlock, and the inner door cycled shut behind them. It was fairly cramped with all four of them crowded into the confined space, but Silence still felt unhappy at the thought of leaving it. He looked at the outer door. Part of him wanted it to open so he could get on with the mission, and part of him hoped it would seize up or malfunction, so he wouldn't have to do this. There'd never been much that really scared him, even before the Maze made him strong and fast and bloody hard to kill, but nanos… invisible tiny machines that could eat you up or transform you into anything at all… something you had no way of fighting… now that was spooky. But when the outer door finally cycled open. Silence was the first one out of the airlock, dropping into the unknown,
    leading by example. Because he was the Captain, and that was his job.
    The pinnace force shields shimmered below him like the inside of a soap bubble, and then he was plunging through them and out the other side, and a bright light blinded him. By the time he'd realized it was just bright sunshine, his feet had already impacted against hard ground, and he had to fight to avoid falling on his ass. It really had been only a drop of a few feet after all. The others landed beside him, and Silence squinted up into the bright sky to watch the pinnace racing for the safety of open space above the atmosphere. He watched till it was safely out of sight, and then turned to check that his people were all right. He was reassured to see the faint shimmering of air around them that meant their full body shields were working. And only then did he turn to look at the world he'd landed on… and realized why the others were so quiet.
    Everything looked normal. In fact, everything looked extremely normal. The landing party was standing on a grassy plain that stretched away for miles before them. The sun was shining brightly in a perfectly normal blue sky, and large white everyday clouds drifted lazily by overhead. The only strange thing was how utterly quiet it was. Not a sound anywhere, of animal or insect, nor even the faintest whisper of a breeze. Morrell turned to look at Silence.
    "Are we in the right place, Captain? Hell, are we even on the right planet?
    There shouldn't be anything like this on a rock like Zero Zero."
    "Oh, I think we can safely assume we've come to the right place," said Carrion.
    "Everyone turn slowly and look behind yourself."
    They all turned and looked, and there was Base Omega, rising up before them pristine and untouched. There was no trace of any damage, and the security force screen that should have isolated it from the rest of Zero Zero wasn't operating.
    The front doors stood open, but there were no signs of life, or any sound at all from within.
    "This is decidedly spooky," said Barren. "I don't know what I expected to find down here, but this sure as hell isn't it. The Commander said she was going to blow the place up."
    "Every indication was that she had," said Silence. "The reports were quite clear. Every system in Base Omega went offline at once, and there hasn't been a signal of any kind from here since."
    "So what's this in front of us?" said Morrell waspishly.
    "You're the esper," said Silence. "You tell me."
    Morrell nodded stiffly, and stared fiercely at the