Deathstalker d-1

by Simon R. Green

  "No," said Ruby. "Hazel wouldn't kill me. She couldn't, any more than I could kill her."

  "Hazel isn't in control anymore," said the AI calmly. "I am."

  "Still," said Random, "you're working at a distance. You can only react to what we do, which limits your responses quite severely."

  "I'll match my electronic responses against your human ones any day. And you could only regain control of the situation by killing Owen and Hazel. Do you think you have it in you to kill your friends? I assure you, nothing less would be enough to prevent me killing you."

  "They're not my friends," said Tobias Moon. "And I'll set my speed and reflexes against any mere machine's. Kill the others, if you wish. All that matters is the reawakening of my people."

  He moved suddenly to one side, inhumanly quickly, and Owen and Hazel's guns moved to follow him. Random and Ruby immediately moved to circle round them, going for their guns. Owen's hand snapped round, and he fired point-blank at Moon, but the Hadenman already had his force shield up, and the energy beam ricocheted into the Maze, which absorbed it harmlessly. Hazel turned back to fire at Random, and Ruby stepped quickly in, pirouetting neatly on one foot to kick the gun out of Hazel's hand. Owen snatched his projectile gun from his belt and trained it on Random as Hazel drew her sword. Moon backed away.

  "You may waste time fighting. I will awaken my people."

  He turned and was suddenly gone, disappearing into the shadows that lay beyond the Maze's light. Random sniffed briefly.

  "Never trust an augmented man. They were no bloody good at following orders on Cold Rock, either."

  Owen wanted to scream, but couldn't. His gun was centered on Random's chest, and he knew he could fire faster than one old man could raise his force shield, no matter how legendary. He would shoot Random, and Hazel would kill Ruby, or die trying. Giles was circling them, looking for a clear shot with his gun, and Owen knew Giles wouldn't hesitate to shoot. The original Deathstalker had always been able to make the hard decisions. The Wolfling was an unknown factor, but he was unarmed and had made no move to interfere. Owen struggled wildly, fighting for control of his body, but it was no longer listening to him. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  And something awoke in the depths of Owen's mind, something new, something from the hindbrain, the undermind, where the real power lay beneath the surface of everyday thoughts. Owen had been through the Maze, and he was different now. Time seemed to slow and stop, and he had all the time in the world to think about what to do. He had an advantage that Ozymandius hadn't used yet The boost. It would have made him faster than any of the others, but the AI hadn't triggered it There had to be a reason for that. The AI wouldn't have overlooked such an obvious advantage. Which could only mean that the boost was in some way dangerous to Ozymandius' control over him. He formed the word in his mind, putting all his strength and resolve behind it, concentrating until there was nothing left in his mind but the single word, boost, over and over, a mantra, a heartbeat, a command. And still it wasn't enough.

  So that new part of him, that strange new force that had surged up from the undermind reached out and touched the minds of his companions. The same force blazed up in all their minds, forming a whole far greater than the sum of its pans. Owen's mouth moved slowly but surely in the word boost, and new strength flooded through him, joining with the new thing from the Maze to supercharge his mind and body, breaking the AI's control in a moment. He stepped back from Random and lowered his gun.

  Hazel threw herself at Ruby in one last desperate attack, but Owen reached out through their mental link and stopped her in mid-thrust. His mind, linked with the others, had become clear and lucid, shining and brilliant. Owen reached out in a new direction he could sense if not see, and suddenly he was somewhere else, and Ozymandius was there with him. It was a strange place, without identifiable shape or form, but he was the light and the AI was the dark. Owen shone like the sun, bright and piercing, and the AI's darkness surrounded him like the endless starless night of the Darkvoid, thick and smothering. But Owen was not alone. His friends were with him, and together they were so much more than they had been. The light blazed bright and brighter, and the darkness fell back before it, growing gray, paler and paler, until it was nothing more than a thin shadow, fading away to nothing at all. And if Owen heard a last despairing cry of his name in the AI's voice, he payed it no heed, and there was only the light, shining on and on forever.

  And then the light was gone, and the link was broken, and Owen fell back alone into his body. He awoke reluctantly, in fits and starts, to find himself lying on the floor of the Maze with Random kneeling beside him. He turned his head slowly to see Hazel lying on her back not far away, twitching and shivering, while Ruby hovered uncertainly over her.

  Owen sat up slowly and carefully. His body felt like his own again, but as though he'd returned to it after a long absence somewhere else. Memories of the mind link were already becoming confused and scattered, like a fading dream, and Owen was content to let that happen. It had been too big, too complex, too frightening for him to stand for long, and he chose quite deliberately to forget it.

  "What happened?" said Random. "What was that? I've never felt anything like it."

  "It's over," said Owen. "Don't think about it."

  "What about the AI? Is its contact broken?"

  "Yes. Ozymandius is dead. I killed him."

  "He was just a machine," said Giles, looking down at him.

  "He was my friend," said Owen, and he turned his face away from them.

  "What do you mean, we've lost contact with the Dauntless?" Captain Silence glared at his Security Officer, V. Stelmach, who stood very stiffly to attention. Investigator Frost stood at her Captain's shoulder and added her own not inconsiderable frown to his. Stelmach stared straight ahead, carefully looking at neither of them.

  "I mean all communication with the ship has been severed, Captain. Our comm implants still work down here, under the planet's surface, but everything else is being blocked."

  Silence scowled unhappily. He didn't like being cut off from his ship, and thereby the Empire, particularly in as volatile a situation as this. It felt like anything could happen down here, buried deep in the guts of the planet. Comm signals routed themselves through hyperspace and were therefore normally instantaneous, no matter where you were in the Empire or who you were talking to. Now Stelmach was saying something on or in this graveyard of a planet was blocking those signals. Which was supposed to be impossible. Silence's scowl deepened. He hadn't liked coming into the Dark void in the first place, and he'd liked having to go dirtside with hardly any advance intelligence of the situation even less, especially once he'd been informed of the planet's history. But the Empress' orders had been very clear. She wanted him there, on the ground, so that he could make instant policy decisions as and when necessary.

  The Empress had been giving him a lot of orders he hadn't liked just recently. He could have reached the planet a lot sooner if he hadn't had to detour to pick back up Stelmach and his new pet, and then the Lord High Dram, his own imposing self. In fact, if he hadn't had to stop for them, he could have arrived at the Wolfling World only a few minutes' after the rebels' ship and might even have managed to stop the rebels going into the Madness Maze. Whatever the hell that was. Still, he didn't think he'd tell the Empress that. He didn't think she'd take it kindly.

  Dram hadn't been too much trouble. He kept to himself on board ship, barely leaving his quarters, and even though he'd insisted on coming down dirtside with the rest of them, he was careful to keep out of everyone's way. Of them all, he seemed the least affected by the almost hypnotic pull of the Maze. It drew the eyes like a magnet, enigmatic and disturbing, but Dram treated it almost casually, as though he saw it every day. He was currently standing off to one side, wrapped in his long dark cloak, studying the entrance to the Maze that blocked their advance. He'd named it the Madness Maze, but had declined to say why, nor offer any further information about it
. Silence could only assume the spy in the rebels' camp had been feeding Dram information that he hadn't felt obligated to share with the rest of his team.

  Silence had no choice but to accept it. Nominally, he was in charge of the away team, but he had enough sense to deter to the Lord High Dram whenever it seemed advisable. Annoying the Empress' official Consort was not good for your career prospects, or even your chances of surviving to reach a pension. He looked at the Maze again, and the Maze looked back, keeping its secrets to itself. Frost had been all for charging straight into it, but Dram had said no. Politely, but very firmly. He said he wanted time to study the Maze first. Presumably he was still studying it, because he hadn't said a word since.

  Silence transferred his attention back to V. Stelmach: Imperial Security Officer, the Empress' eyes and ears, and general pain in the rear. Partly because of his constant air of superiority, but mostly because of what he had with him. When the Dauntless picked Stelmach up from the planet Grendel, he brought a pet with him. One of the alien Sleepers from the planet's Vaults. It stood, or rather crouched, to one side, well away from everyone else. Nine feet tall, roughly humanoid, with spiked bloodred armor and steel teeth bared in a constant, unnerving grin. It had dark crimson eyes that never blinked, and it smelled of bitter honey and dried blood. Its long-fingered hands had vicious claws, and its crouch suggested it was only a moment or a thought away from attacking everything that breathed.

  Silence had seen one of these butchers at work before, slaughtering his men in the horrid city they'd discovered deep in the rotten heart of Grendel. A genetically-engineered killing machine, designed millennia before by an unknown race to fight an unknown foe. If God was good, they were both extinct, but their deadly legacy lived on in the Vaults under Grendel. Stelmach swore that this particular specimen was safe now, controlled by a cybernetic yoke that literally imposed correct thoughts on the creature and made it impossible for the ugly thing to do anything but follow orders. Silence wasn't convinced. New inventions always had bugs in them, and if the yoke did happen to break down, he didn't want to be anywhere near the alien when it happened. In fact, he didn't want to be on the same planet. He'd actually been tempted to disobey orders and refuse to have the horror on his ship, but in the end he had to agree. Firstly, because V. Stelmach spoke directly for the Empress, and you didn't disobey a direct order from Her Imperial Majesty if you wanted to live to see the coming dawn. And secondly, because if the Tomb of the Hadenmen really were to be awakened, he just might need the Sleeper to even the odds. He'd back the Grendel alien against practically anything, up to and including any army of killer cyborgs.

  His own army, such as it was, was currently standing around waiting not particularly patient for the Lord High Dram to get his finger out and make up his damn mind: two full companies of Imperial marines, thirty-five battle espers and twenty Wampyr. The marines were muttering quietly among themselves, glancing at the Maze when they thought no one was looking, and passing around bottles of booze and battle drugs. The battle espers were looking at anything rather than the Maze and becoming increasingly twitchy. The Wampyr looked like the walking dead, but then they always did. They ignored the Maze, and Silence tried to tell himself it was only his imagination that they were looking increasingly hungry.

  Silence sighed quietly. All this because of a handful of rebels. He still didn't understand what was so special about them, but they'd led him a hell of a chase before bringing him here, into the Darkvoid. To an almost legendary planet, to the Tomb of the Hadenmen and the Darkvoid Device itself. Silence had hoped he'd be allowed to kill them now and get it over with, but they'd offended and insulted the Empress, according to V. Stelmach, and that meant they had to be captured and brought back alive, if not necessarily intact, to stand trial on Golgotha. Killing them would have been kinder. And all this time he and his army were standing around, the rebels were getting further away and closer to the Tomb. He gestured wearily for Stelmach to rejoin his pet, and the Security Officer saluted briskly and strode away. Frost stirred at Silence's side, and he turned his head in her direction.

  "What do you suppose that thing ahead of us is?" she said quietly. "Just looking at it makes my head ache."

  "According to Dram, it's called the Madness Maze," said Silence, careful to keep his voice low, too. "Though when it comes to what that means, your guess is as good as mine. Dram might know, but if he does, he isn't telling. Much. It's apparently some kind of Hadenman defense to keep out intruders like us. Probably booby-trapped, but the espers should be able to spot them in advance. They'd better, I'm sending them in first. I was hoping I could use Stelmach to get direct orders from the Empress about entering the Maze, but it seems the comm systems are jammed, so all we can do is stand around with our thumbs up our asses until the Lord High Bloody Dram deigns to make a decision."

  Frost nodded glumly. "How's Stelmach's pet holding up?"

  "Still under control, and ready for action. All we need now is an enemy to point it at. And preferably something large to hide behind. I'd feel a lot happier if Stelmach's control wasn't basically just on/off. I can't help feeling that creature knows exactly what's been done to it and is just waiting for one slip on our part to express its extreme displeasure."

  "Let it," said Frost. "I'd kick its ass and ruin its day."

  The trouble is. Silence thought, she means it. He decided to change the subject before she could get too enthusiastic about the idea. She was quite capable of attacking the alien on an impulse, just to see what would happen. She'd been trained all her life to kill aliens and saw the Sleeper as a challenge. He gestured for Stelmach to come back. The Security Officer glared at him coldly, but did as he was ordered. He might be the Empress' eyes and ears, but Silence was still his superior officer. For the moment. He tried to express that last thought in his cold face and stance as he saluted and stood stiffly at attention.

  "Stelmach," Silence said, smiling warmly in a comradely sort of way, "the Investigator and I have been talking about you. Specifically, we've become very intrigued as to what the V. in your name stands for. We've tried everything to find out, including asking the ship's computers, but you seem to have blocked off access to all forms of inquiry. As your Captain, I have to say I don't like the idea of one of my crew withholding information from me. After all, you never know what might prove to be important some day. So be a good man and tell us your first name. Unless you're ashamed of it, of course."

  "I am not ashamed of it," Stelmach said coldly. "It is a perfectly good and honorable name. I just prefer not to use it."

  "Oh, go on," said Frost. "We won't tell anyone. Not unless it's really embarrassing."

  Silence shushed her and was about to try again when the Lord High Dram suddenly turned away from the Maze and strode unhurriedly back to join them. "Send your men in, Captain. Use the marines first. We'll hold back the espers and the Wampyr until we see how the Maze reacts to the marines." He looked briefly at Stelmach. "You stand back, too. We'll need that pet of yours for later. Don't worry, Valiant. You'll get your chance."

  He walked back to study the entrance to the Maze again. Stelmach stared straight ahead, two spots of bright crimson burning on his cheeks. Silence and Frost looked at each other and didn't say a thing. They didn't dare. Some moments are just too precious to disturb. Stelmach saluted, turned and strode quickly back to rejoin the Sleeper. He should have waited for his Captain to dismiss him, but something in the extreme straightness of his back suggested this would not be a good time to bring that up. Silence firmly swallowed a smile, and gestured for the two marine company commanders to join him. They approached at something just a little less than a run, eager for orders and a chance to do something before their men started fighting each other under the influence of drink and battle drugs. Silence nodded to them as they saluted and stood at attention.

  "Get your men ready. Under the Lord High Dram's orders, I am sending both companies of marines into the Maze." He looked at the commanders sharply,
but they just looked calmly back, giving away nothing. Silence smiled grimly. "In an ideal world, we'd send in the remotes first and check the Maze out from top to bottom from a comfortable distance, but apparently we don't have the time. I don't have to tell you to keep your eyes and ears open and your wits about you, but I want us all to be extra careful. There are bound to be hidden dangers and booby traps, either intrinsic to the Maze or left by the rebels. Either way, let's do our best to disappoint them and avoid triggering anything we don't have to. I don't want to be up all night writing letters to your next of kin about why we're sending you home in a sealed coffin."

  "Who's going to lead the incursion?" said Frost.

  "I am," Silence said flatly. "This is too important to leave to anyone else, and I don't want to hear any arguments from you. Investigator."

  "Wouldn't dream of it," said Frost briskly. "Especially since I'll be going in with you for exactly the same reason. And I don't want to hear any arguments from you, Captain."

  Silence was about to answer her anyway when he realized the two Commanders were watching the exchange with interest. They had enough sense not to smile, but Silence glared at them anyway. "Check your equipment and get your men ready. We'll be going into the Maze in ten minutes, and I don't want to hear any excuses. The Investigator and I will lead the way. I want all the espers to accompany us. No exceptions. If the Lord High Dram says anything, send him to me, and I'll officially ignore him. We'll leave the Wampyr behind to keep Stelmach and his pet company. Just in case. Any questions? And they'd better be important."

  "Yes, sir," said Commander Jameson. He was senior by a couple of months to Commander Farrell, and never let him forget it by always insisting on talking first. Silence hadn't heard a dozen words out of Farrell yet, but he lived in hope. Both Commanders were supposed to be good men in a tight corner. Jameson looked straight ahead and kept his voice low. "Will the Lord High Dram be accompanying us into the Maze, sir?"