But until then, he was the new captain of a very new ship, where nothing could be trusted until it had been thoroughly tested and tried and proved reliable. Fine claims were all very well, but Silence reserved judgment. Engineers had a tendency to overenthusiasm, especially when it wasn't their butts on the firing line. Besides, Silence knew where the new stardrive had come from. The engineers had derived it from the drive in the alien ship he'd found crashlanded on Unseeli, barely a year ago. Silence supposed it was just possible the stardocks now had a full working knowledge of the alien technology, but just in case, he made it a point to know where the nearest escape pod was at any given moment. That was the other side to the Empress' appointing him Captain of the Dauntless; if nothing else, he was entirely expendable.
He deliberately put that thought aside and concentrated on the viewscreen before him. The Dauntless had dropped out of hyperspace and taken up an orbit around the planet Grendel some two hours ago, and he still couldn't get any sensible data out of his brand new sensors. The information they were giving him was questionable where it wasn't obscure, and no bloody use to him at all. Practically every question he put to his computers came back "insufficient data," and the ship's AI was sulking because he'd shouted at it. But he couldn't in good faith put off planetfall much longer. The Empress' orders had been quite explicit. He was to locate and open the Vaults of the Sleepers and subjugate or destroy whatever creatures he found in them. Nothing new in that; it was the Empire's standard attitude to all aliens. But the aliens on Grendel, or rather buried deep beneath its surface, were different. Vicious, unnatural killing machines, they'd slaughtered the last Empire team to encounter them. Some fool opened a Vault, and that was that. Hopefully things would be different this time. Firstly, he had some idea of what he was getting into, and secondly, when he finally got around to opening up a Vault, he was going to be backed up by a full company of fifty marines, ten battle espers, and twenty Wampyr.
Which should give him an edge, if nothing else.
Silence was frankly surprised that there were still twenty Wampyr left in the Service. Their uses were limited, they were expensive to maintain, they disturbed the hell out of anyone who had to work with them… and by now everyone knew all about plasma babies. And that was all he needed on a new ship with a new crew: a new addictive drug to tempt his men. They were probably already building illicit stills and cooking up new battle drugs in the labs, just to see if they could get away with it under a new Captain. Which was possibly why the Empire had insisted on supplying him with a new Security Officer: V. Stelmach by name. He hadn't volunteered his first name, and Silence hadn't pressed him in case it was something embarrassing. (Vernon, Valentine… Violet?) Big, broad, close-mouthed and entirely humorless, the Security Officer was never far from the Captain or the Investigator, keeping a watchful eye. Just a little reminder that the two of them still had to prove themselves. Silence did his best not to notice.
He glanced across at Frost, standing rock-solid at parade rest beside his chair, her fierce gaze fixed on the view of Grendel before them. He hadn't had much chance to talk to her since Lionstone had pardoned them both. There'd been too much to do getting the ship ready to depart, the nature of their jobs kept them apart, and besides… he wasn't sure what he would have said anyway. The Investigator had saved his life, but he didn't know why. Anyone else, he might have made a few educated guesses, but Investigators had none of the softer emotions. Their training saw to that. There were those who said the Investigators were as inhuman as the aliens they studied. That there was no room in them for anything but cold, calculated killing.
In which case, she'd feel right at home on Grendel.
Silence sighed quietly and gave his full attention to the viewscreen. Grendel filled the screen, a gray featureless ball of ash, hiding secrets. The planet had a surface once, complete with the decaying husks of deserted alien cities and machinery, but all that was gone; lost or destroyed when the Imperial Fleet scorched the planet from orbit to be sure of destroying the terrible creatures that had boiled out of the Vault of the Sleepers.
Grendel had been under full quarantine ever since, and six starcruisers hung permanently in orbit over the planet to ensure that nothing and no one got in or out. Silence had thought that something of an overreaction, but that was before he'd seen the surviving records of the first contact team and saw how they died. Now he was just grateful the ships were there. Not that they'd actually back him up, even if things went disastrously wrong a second time, but they would ensure that whatever happened not one alien creature would escape from the planet. Even if they had to scorch it again. Silence shivered briskly, as though someone had just walked over his grave, and put that thought aside, too. First things first: check that the quarantine remained secure, for the record. He had his communications officer raise the command ship of the quarantine, and the cold, calm features of Captain Bartek of the Defiant filled the viewscreen. Bartek the Butcher. In his time he'd overseen the scorching of three worlds and put down a dozen rebellions, by whatever means he thought necessary. A personal favorite of the Iron Bitch, and just the kind of man you needed to run a quarantine like this. Try and bribe Bartek, and they'd hand you back your balls on the way out. Silence nodded to him courteously.
"Last contact before we make planetfall, Captain Bartek. Just checking that everything's still secure. For the record."
Bartek sniffed and fixed Silence with a cold, unyielding stare. "For the record, then: quarantine remains unbroken. Not one ship has survived to make planetfall since this operation was set up, and there has been absolutely no trace of alien activity on the planet itself. My orders are to stand by and observe as you send your people down in pinnaces. They will disembark, and the pinnaces will return to the Dauntless, where they will be thoroughly inspected by my people. So if you do let loose something you can't control, it will have no means of leaving the planet's surface. Understand me, Captain Silence: you and all your people are completely expendable. I have been expressly ordered that under no circumstances am I to assist or help you in any way once you have made planetfall. Whatever happens, once you're down there, you're on your own. And in the most extreme case, acting on my judgment alone, I am to destroy the Dauntless completely if there seems any risk that she might be… contaminated. Have I made myself clear, Captain?"
"Utterly," said Silence calmly. "I've seen the records of the first team. Take no chances. Silence out."
He sensed as much as heard Frost stirring at his side while Bartek's face disappeared from the viewscreen, replaced by Grendel's enigmatic surface. He turned slightly to look at her.
"Problem, Investigator?"
Frost sniffed. "Thinks he's so hot. All he's ever done is give orders from the rear. Never killed in hot blood in his life, like as not. Darling of the Academy, but no guts. No real guts."
"Not to worry, Investigator. We've gone into sticky situations before without any backup."
"At least then we didn't have to worry about being shot in the back by our own side." She flicked a quick glance at the Security Officer, who was quietly studying the most recent sensor readings at the science console. "We're not even entirely safe on our own ship. V. Stelmach. Wonder what the V. stands for. Vile, Vicious… Vermin?"
"Probably all three," said Silence easily. "You could always look it up in the computer records."
"I already tried that. He's got it under a personal security code. Must be something really embarrassing."
"Ignore him. We'll do what we have to, same as we've always done. I just hope our luck's better than the last time. Unseeli was bad enough, but Grendel looks as if it could manage something really unpleasant, if it put its mind to it. Shame there weren't any survivors from the first contact team. I would have liked some firsthand impressions of what we might encounter."
"There was one survivor," said Frost. "The Investigator. She failed to spot the dangers."
"Might have known an Investigator would survive, if anyone cou
ld. What happened to her?"
"They sent her to a hellworld."
"Where she's no bloody use to all. Typical. Still, I'm surprised they didn't execute her."
"The hellworld will do that."
Silence decided not to press the point. Frost was clearly touchy about her fellow Investigator. They were all supposed to be perfect, dependable, infallible. It said so in their job description. Just like a Captain was always supposed to know what to do for the best… Silence smiled briefly and leaned back in his command chair. Time to get the show on the road, starting with a good look from a safe distance at exactly where they'd be landing. The landing site had already been decided, and remote control mechanisms were already busy constructing secure landing pads. Silence called up the view on his private screen and frowned thoughtfully. Grendel had no solid land masses anymore. Only ash. Silence had chosen this particular location because one of the few things his sensors could agree on was that there was a Vault there, barely a mile below the surface. Which made it the easiest by far to get at. Remote control mining equipment was currently digging its way down through the ash toward it.
Except it wasn't alone down there. Surrounding the Vault for miles in all directions was a city, or what was left of it There was no trace left of the deserted cities on the surface. The scorching had left nothing but an endless sea of ash, from pole to pole. But under the ash, somehow miraculously untouched by all the destruction, lay the remains of an alien civilization. The first contact team had passed through an underground city to reach their Vault. The experience nearly drove them all mad. There was something about the city, something unbearable to the human mind. The sensors couldn't tell much about it, except that it was there and completely deserted. And right in the middle of that miles-wide city lay the main Vault of the Sleepers: a colossal steel tomb the size of a mountain. Only what slept within that tomb slept very lightly.
Silence had already studied the first team's records of the city they encountered, but they didn't make much sense. They were far from complete, and what there was was decidedly unpleasant. The details were too strange, too alien, too unlike anything Silence had ever encountered before. Even Frost admitted to finding them disturbing, and she had more experience of the alien than everyone else on the Dauntless put together. Although some of the people on board were pretty strange in themselves. Silence grimaced briefly at the thought. He ought to check in on his contact team again, now that the drop was getting so close. He raised the marine sergeant Angelo Null on his private screen and nodded politely to the broad, faintly scowling face.
"How are your boys doing, Sergeant? Any problems?"
"Nothing I can't handle. They've been thoroughly briefed as to what happened to the last contact crew, so they're not exactly happy about the drop, but at least they know what they're getting into. The triple combat pay brought a smile to their faces, and the new battle drugs should help. The stuff we've been supplied with would make a mad dog killer out of a sainted nun. But I think we'll save that for emergencies. Chemical courage is all very well, but I prefer the real thing. Personally, I put more faith in the state-of-the-art weaponry they've given us. Very tasty. Recharge time is still two minutes minimum, but for sheer power and destructive capability, I've never seen anything like these guns. Gives me a warm, comfortable, secure feeling just looking at them."
"I'm glad to hear that. Sergeant. But I feel I should remind you that the first contact team was also armed to the gills, and it didn't seem to help them much. So I want all your men armed with shrapnel clusters, concussion grenades, incendiaries and force shields, as well as disrupters. Never mind the expense; I'll take care of all that. You load your men down with as much as they can carry and still move freely. I'm also authorizing the use of two portable disrupter cannon and a tangle field. Get your people prepped; we'll commence planetfall one hour from now."
"Understood, Captain." Sergeant Null hesitated for a moment. "Sir… we've worked with battle espers before, but… Wampyr? Are they really going to be part of the combat team?"
"That's correct, Sergeant. Do you have a problem with that? Perhaps you'd like me to issue garlic and crucifixes to the men?"
"No, sir. No problem, sir."
"I'm glad to hear it."
Silence broke the link, and the sergeant's troubled face disappeared from the screen. Although he hadn't actually come out and said anything, Silence knew what Null meant. The Wampyr weren't exactly battle troops, like the marines or even the espers. They were more like a weapon; you pointed them at the target and then stood well back and let them get on with it. The battle espers weren't that easy to handle, either. They were already borderline psychotic, or they wouldn't be able to handle working in a combat situation. You surrounded them with esp-blockers till you needed them, and then let them loose and hoped for the best. Pound for pound they could be more devastating than ranked disrupter cannon, but you couldn't always trust them to stop when you wanted. They'd been officially scrapped, and the fact that the Empress had insisted on the last few for this mission said a lot about how dangerous it was likely to be. Silence had decided early on to keep them all in stasis until just before the drop. Safer all around for everyone. He just wished he could have done the same with the Wampyr.
He frowned thoughtfully. Officially, they were Stelmach's pets, operating solely under the direct command of the Security Officer. It was the Wampyr's last chance to prove their usefulness. If they didn't distinguish themselves on this mission, the Wampyr project would be discontinued. That should encourage them to follow orders and not make much trouble, but Silence didn't hope for much more than that. The Wampyr made excellent individual warriors, fast and strong and utterly fearless, but they were no damn good at all at working with other troops. The never-ending thirst that drove them made them fierce fighters, but prone to… distraction. Silence sighed. He'd been putting it off as long as he could, but had to talk to them. He contacted their quarters and waited patiently. They had their own separate territory down below, keeping them apart from the rest of the crew, 10 the relief of all concerned.
A dead man's face appeared on his private screen. Its flesh was pale and bloodless, and its expression was cold and distant, as though listening to some absorbing song the living could never hear. Beyond the face, the Wampyr living quarters were as dark as night. They preferred it that way. Silence cleared his throat, and then wished he hadn't. It made him sound weak.
"This is the Captain. We'll be making planetfall within the hour. Are your people fully briefed and prepared?"
"Yes, Captain. We are most eager to begin." The Wampyr had their own leader under Stelmach; something to do with alpha dominance. Just another thing the humans didn't understand about the race they'd created. According to the records, this particular Wampyr had been called Ciannan Budd. Once he'd been a living man, with hopes and dreams and human emotions. Then they killed him and filled his veins with synthetic blood, and whatever feelings he had now were no longer anything a human would recognize. Silence's mouth was almost painfully dry, but he forced himself to maintain eye contact.
"Any problems with the blood substitute we've been providing?"
"It nourishes, but it's not the real thing. It doesn't satisfy."
Something in the flat, peremptory voice made Silence's skin crawl, but he kept it off of his face. "Stand ready. I'll contact you again just before the drop."
The Wampyr nodded and cut off the comm link from his end. Silence sighed quietly, slowly relaxing in his chair. It could have been worse, he supposed. They could have been Hadenmen.
"We can't trust them," said Frost, almost casually. 'They're not human."
"People have been saying that about you Investigators for years," Silence said calmly. 'The Wampyr are a useful tool in certain situations, and they'll do their duty for the same reason we will: because nothing less than one hundred percent commitment will get us off Grendel alive. You let me worry about the Wampyr. I want you concentrating on the Sleepers.
"
Frost shrugged. "Show me one, and I'll give it my undivided attention. You keep saying we. Are you still determined to join us on this drop?"
"Yes. When we break open the Vault, decisions are going to have to be made in a hurry, and I don't want to leave them to Stelmach."
"Talking about me again?" said Stelmach, appearing soundlessly on Silence's other side, opposite the Investigator. Silence wouldn't give him the satisfaction of jumping.
"Just saying we'd better take one last look at the records the first contact team left us. Ugly viewing, but necessary. Anything we can learn from them could end up saving lives. There's always the chance we'll spot something new. Something useful."
Stelmach nodded expressionlessly, and the three of them peered silently at the images appearing on Silence's private screen as he entered the restricted codes. Most of the footage from the first team's cameras was useless. It was fine until the team actually entered the city below the surface, and then just the proximity to the alien technology began to interfere with the cameras. They cut in and out, apparently at random, so that what was left was a shifting montage of people, scenes and events. A lot of it was blurred and uncertain, as though things had been happening too quickly for the cameras to keep up with them. Computer enhancement hadn't helped much. A lot of what was on the film was so strange, so different, that the computers had nothing in their records to compare it to. Silence couldn't bring himself to feel unhappy about that. He had a feeling seeing the whole footage, intact and uninterrupted, would have been enough to turn his hair gray.
The record consisted of impressions and brief bursts of detail. It began with glimpses of the alien surroundings, dark and disturbing. The huge buildings had no lights, and strange shadows moved slowly across their surfaces like drifting thoughts as the contact team proceeded. The structures weren't just buildings. Wrapped around them like dreaming snakes, or protruding from walls and windows like so many tumors, were all kinds of alien machinery. Nightmares of twisting, shiny materials that seemed almost alive. There were machines that breathed, and coiled tubes that glistened with sweat. Stranger shapes with unblinking eyes, and things that looked like they might have been moving until you got close to them. The contact team moved among the massive buildings like rats caught in a maze they could never hope to understand, and their voices grew high-pitched and hysterical.
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