Deathstalker

Under the fishes, the City

John Silence, once again a Captain in the Imperial Fleet by Her Majesty's pleasure, sat stiffly in the command chair on the bridge of his new ship the Dauntless and tried unsuccessfully to get comfortable. It wasn't that there was anything actually wrong with the chair, it was just so new, like everything else. It didn't give in the right places, or make allowances for his habitual gestures, like the old one had. But that chair was long gone with the rest of the good ship Darkwind She'd been his ship for many years, and a good ship, too. Silence snorted silently. Here he was, with a new ship and a second chance he'd had no right to expect or hope for, and all he could do was find fault. Well, thought Silence, do what you're best at, that's what I always say.

But he had to admit the Dauntless was something special, even if she was still fresh from the stardocks, all sparkling clean and completely untested. If she lived up to even half the claims the engineers made for her, she'd be the fastest, best-gunned ship in the Fleet, and a genuine wonder of the Galaxy. She had the new stardrive, more disrupter cannon than any ship before, and force shields powerful enough to survive a dive into a sun. The Dauntless was a whole damn navy in itself, and Silence wasn't blind to the trust the Empress had placed in him by giving him the command. Any other Captain might have been tempted to just take the ship and run for the Rim, to build a small empire of his own, secure in the knowledge it would be years before any similar ships could come after him. But Lionstone had known he wouldn't do that. She had given him back his life and his commission, when she needn't have given him either, because she trusted him, and now he was her man, blood and bone and spirit, until they were both dead and gone to dust.

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 could. 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.

The party's lights glanced across shifting scenes like flashes of lightning in a storm as they shorted in and out, until finally the contact team came to the great steel doors of the Vault of the Sleepers. According to the computers, they were twenty-three feet tall and ten feet wide; great featureless slabs of shining steel with no trace of lock mechanisms. The team fussed around with them for some time before losing patience and blasting them open with a portable disrupter cannon. The doors blew back, light flared within the Vault, and the Sleepers came boiling out.

Guns flashed desperately, but the aliens were everywhere. Huge creatures, eight to ten feet tall, wrapped in spiked silicon armor that was somehow a part of them. Mouths stuffed with steel teeth, gaping and grinning. Blood dripped and spattered from their jaws. Marines were firing in all directions. Swinging swords. Shouting and screaming. The aliens darting among them, almost too fast to follow, despite their size. A clawed hand tore a human head from its body, which walked on for several steps before collapsing. Another alien ripped a hole in a marine's belly, despite his field armor, and buried its face in his guts. Blood flew on the air, intermittent light from discharging guns, screams of pain and horror. A face filled the screen, begging and pleading, and then was snatched away. An alien posed for a moment before the camera, wrapped in human entrails. A marine stuck his gun in an alien's mouth and blew its head off. Another alien thrust its clawed hand into his back and out his chest, and waved the dying body like a banner. An alien ripped the lower jaw from a marine's face and used it like a club till it shattered. There were aliens running on the walls and on the ceilings, like huge impossible insects. The last marines fell, and the aliens swept past the bodies, heading for the surface. The screen showed light fading away into darkness, and then went blank.

Silence sat watching the blank screen for a moment, then reached forward and turned it off. The record didn't lose any of its impact, no matter how many times he watched it. Everyone who'd recorded those scenes was dead, their footage preserved by their ship's computers. He still found it hard to believe that the aliens had slaughtered the contact team so effortlessly. But he'd seen swords shatter on the alien's crimson armor, and disrupter beams ricochet, leaving the aliens unharmed. He was beginning to wonder if anything could stop them, short of another scorching.

And these were the creatures the Empress wanted him to capture and train as shock troops.

"I don't think we'll show this to the troops at their briefing," said Stelmach. "It would only upset them."

"I've already shown it to them," said Silence. "It's my experience that informed troops last longer."

"Then with your permission, Captain, I'll set things in order for the drop. I still have arrangements to make."

"Do whatever you have to," said Silence. "We drop on the hour. If you're not ready by then, you can walk down."

Stelmach nodded briefly and left the bridge. Frost sniffed.

"That man needs more fiber in his diet. Are you sure we haven't got any more footage of the first contact?"

"This is all that's viewable. I don't think I could stand much more. I don't think I've ever seen anything as vicious and deadly as those creatures."

"Damn right," said Frost, grinning broadly. "I can't wait to go head-to-head with them. Been ages since I had a real challenge."

The trouble is, Silence thought dryly, I think she means it.

* * *

The surface of Grendel was even more depressing in reality than it had been on the viewscreen. The great sea of ash stretched away in all directions, smooth and featureless and dead. There was more ash in the air, diffusing the pale crimson light of the sun, till it looked like the sky itself was bleeding. The five pinnacles from the Dauntless touched down one after the other on the specially constructed steel landing pads floating on the ash and waited just long enough for the contact team to disembark before taking off again. Captain Silence looked about him, getting the feel of the new gravity. Bit heavier than he was used to, but he could manage. The recreate built into his uniform's collar surrounded his head with a bubble of fresh air. Even if he could have breathed the vomitus mixture Grendel called air, the ash suspended in it would have blinded and choked him in seconds. He watched the departing pinnacles arrow up through the bloody skies with mixed feelings. Without them, he really was on his own.

He looked back at his team, noting without surprise that it had already split up into its three components of marines, espers and Wampyr. They still all looked to him for orders. As though he had any better idea what to do than they did. Still, when in doubt, sound confident.

"All right, pay attention! There's an elevator to take us down to the buried city attached to the underside of these rafts, courtesy of the mining equipment. Bad news is it'll only hold fifteen at a time, so the marines will go down first to check things out. Once they've given the okay, the Investigator will go down with the espers, and then Stelmach and his Wampyr. Weapons in hand, ladies and gentlemen. If it moves and it's not us, shoot it. You don't have to wait for my permission. And watch yourselves once we get down there. The alien technology can have a somewhat disquieting effect on the human mind. Just concentrate on the mission, and you should be fine. Any problems?"

"Do you want the bad news, or the really bad news?" said Frost.

"Give it to me straight," said Silence heavily. "What's gone wrong now?"

"First, we've lost all contact with the Dauntless. Something in the city below is interfering with our comm systems. That's a new development since the first team was here. Which means, if we need to leave here in an emergency, we're stuffed. We can't call for help, reinforcements, or a pickup. We're stuck here till the pinnacles return at the agreed time. Which is four hours and counting. You might care to consider that the first team lasted a grand total of two hours and seven minutes."

"And the really bad news?" said Silence after a moment.

"The mining machinery's broken down. The elevator's still working, but the shaft extends only to the edge of the underground city. That leaves us with at least an hour's walk through the city before we reach the Vault."

Great, thought Silence. Just great. The one thing he'd been counting on was being able to avoid long exposure to the city's alien technology and its effects on the human mind. It also meant that they had that much less time to cope with whatever came out of the Vault. Silence thought hard.

"Do we have any idea of why the mining machinery's broken down?"

"No. Telemetry's out, along with the comm systems. The slightly good news is that at least the elevator's still working. For the moment."

"So that even if it gets us down to the city, there's no guarantee it'll still be working when we want to come back up?"

"You got it."

"Marvelous. All right, we go ahead with the mission as planned. Unlike the first team, we've got battle espers and esp-blockers on our side. Hopefully one or the other will protect us from the city's influence. If not, we get to find out just how tough we really are. Get the marines moving, Investigator. Time is not on our side."

The trip down in the elevator turned out to be something of an anticlimax. It was crowded, hot and stuffy, and distinctly claustrophobic, but since everyone was busy considering the horrors to come, nobody really noticed. With the comm systems out, there was no point in waiting for the marines' all clear, so Silence and the Investigator accompanied the first batch of espers down and hoped for the best.

The city itself seemed quiet and peaceful, but Silence couldn't help thinking of it as the quiet of the graveyard. The marines had already set up a perimeter, with bright lights pushing back the darkness in all directions. They carried their guns at the ready and looked more than willing to use them at the first opportunity. Frost hummed something cheerful as she set off to inspect the perimeter, and Silence moved the espers off to one side. For the moment, he had all three of his esp-blockers working, hoping their field would be strong enough to protect the entire team. But, just in case, he briefed the espers on maintaining a full psionic screen, should it prove necessary. They agreed easily enough, their eyes elsewhere. Silence couldn't blame them. It was all he could do to keep from turning round to stare out into the darkness. Anything could be out there. Anything at all.

The Wampyr waited patiently for orders. Stelmach was too busy looking around with an open mouth. Apparently seeing the city on a viewscreen was quite a different thing from seeing it up close and personal. He caught Silence looking at him and closed his mouth with a snap. He barked out orders, and the Wampyr moved unhurriedly to take up a formation around him. Whatever else happened, Stelmach was clearly determined on surviving to tell everyone else about it. Silence smiled crookedly. It wasn't a bad idea, surrounding yourself with a wall of Wampyr. He just wished he'd thought of it first. Frost came back from the perimeter, and he put on his best cool, calm and confident look. Though he didn't know why he bothered. It had never fooled her before. She nodded casually and moved in close, her voice little more than a murmur.

"Perimeter's secure, for the moment. Nothing on the motion trackers, but the long-range sensors are malfunctioning. We have to consider the possibility that ail our tech could fall foul to the city's influence. No guns, no force shields, no anything. We could end up going one-on-one with the Sleepers armed only with our swords and bad intentions. I'm not even going to think about the repeaters breaking down. Of course, there's always the Wampyr. They're pretty deadly in themselves, and their strength and speed aren't reliant on tech. Maybe our superiors did know what they were doing when they insisted we include the Wampyr on our team. How are the espers holding up?"

"Hard to tell. They're acting pretty spacey, but that's hardly unusual with battle espers. I'm relying on the esp-blockers to protect them and us for the moment. Let's get the troops moving. Investigator. The less time we spend down here, the better."

"Spoilsport," said Frost. "You never want to do anything fun."

The marines took the point, guns at the ready, lights blazing on their helmets. The cameras on their shoulders were still working, even though they couldn't transmit live to the Dauntless. The only way a record of this expedition would survive would be if someone returned to the surface with it. Frost moved with the marines, eyes alight, just waiting for some enemy stupid enough to start something. Silence came next, with the espers, if only because he wanted to keep an eye on them. They ignored their surroundings and trudged along with their heads hanging. Whether this was due to the oppressive nature of the city or the numbing effects of the esp-blockers was unclear. Stelmach and his Wampyr brought up the rear. The city didn't seem to bother the Wampyr at all, but presumably when you've already been killed and brought back there's not much left that can upset you. Two of them were carrying a large piece of equipment that Silence hadn't been briefed on. When he'd inquired, he'd received a cold stare and was told he didn't need to know. Apparently it was some secret weapon for Stelmach to try out, if he got the opportunity. Just another secret Silence wasn't party to. He smiled briefly. Damn thing probably wasn't working anymore anyway.

They moved on into the city, and things got worse. The huge buildings and other, less obvious constructions pressed in around them, intimidatingly huge and claustrophobically close. Sometimes enigmatic projections stretched out to block the way, and then they had to be stooped under or climbed over. The surfaces felt slick and unhealthy to the touch. The moving lights hid as much in shadows as they revealed, for which Silence for one was grateful. What he could see was disturbing enough.

The city was a nightmare of steel and flesh; an unnatural combination of breathing metals and silver-wired meat. Rounded cylinders pulsed like gleaming intestines, and pumps beat like hearts, with great shifting valves. Things that might once have been living creatures had been made parts of functioning machines. There were complex devices with eyes and entrails, and long metal limbs tapering away to nothing. Things moved and settled for no reason, and swiveled slowly to follow the contact team as they passed. There were great, slow machines that looked as though they'd been grown as much as made, and small metal scuttling things with bright pinpoint eyes that kept to the shadows. So far, the marines had resisted the temptation to fire at them, but their patience was getting strained. An almost palpable oppression had settled over the party like a dark cloud. Everyone could feel the pressure of watching eyes and something listening to every sound they made. And everywhere it was all slick and smooth and functioning, as though the makers and operators had just stepped out a second ago and might return at any moment. Silence moved up to walk alongside Frost.

"Remind you of anything?" he said quietly.

"Yeah. The alien ship and the base it transformed on Unseeli. Biomechanics. A cross between living organic materials and functioning technology, far beyond anything we've ever achieved."

"Could there be a connection between the Unseeli alien and whatever built this city?"

"It's possible. But the alien ship crashlanded on Unseeli very recently, and these ruins are old. According to the Dauntless' sensors, before they started acting strangely, this city has been down here longer than the human race has been civilized… Makes you think, doesn't it?"

Things got worse as they descended slowly toward the vault. The weird constructions closed in around them, enigmatic and disturbing, till the team was forced to walk in single file. The crowding shapes and structures hinted at meaning and function, but never enough to make any sense. The angles and dimensions were wrong, somehow, as though they added up to more than was visible with the naked eye. The marines became twitchy and quarrelsome. Some fired their guns out into the darkness, then couldn't or wouldn't say why. Their personal force shields stopped working for no apparent reason. Silence tried turning the esp-blockers off, to see if the espers could protect the team better, but they immediately became so hysterical he had to turn the esp-blockers back on to keep them from going insane. Even the Wampyr were affected. They stuck close together, their dead faces cold and intent. Stelmach looked like a bag of nerves, all wide eyes and trembling mouth. Silence had a growing ache between his shoulder blades from tense muscles, and it seemed to him that his thoughts weren't as clear as they had been. He sometimes lost track of what he was thinking and had to concentrate hard to recover it. Even Frost had stopped her cheerful humming. They'd been walking just over three quarters of an hour, and were deep in the guts of the alien city, when they lost their first man.

A trapdoor opened up beneath the feet of the leading marine, and as suddenly as that he was gone. He just had time to start a scream, and then he disappeared into the darkness beneath the floor. Silence and Frost pushed their way forward and stood at the edges of the gap. They could hear the marine's scream fading away to nothing long after they lost sight of the light blinking on his helmet. The marines clustered around the gap in the floor, shining their lights down, but the light didn't travel far, and the blackness showed them nothing at all.

"Any idea how deep that is?" Silence said finally. "Could we lower a line and go after him?"

"The sensors are out," said Frost dispassionately. "Nothing on the motion trackers. It could be bottomless, for all we know."

"Move on," said Silence, straightening up. A marine glared at him.

"We don't leave our people behind, Captain."

"You do this time. We've no way of getting to him, in the unlikely event that he is still alive. We're probably going to lose more men before we get out of here. Get used to the idea. Now move. Since you're so eager, you can take the point." The marine glared at him for a long moment, as though he was going to say something, and then he turned away and started off down the narrow corridor. Silence waved for the marines to follow after him. "Everyone stay close together and keep your eyes open. No telling what other booby traps there are here," He looked across the gap at Frost. "Are any of our instruments in good enough shape to spot things like this in advance?"

"Not really," said the Investigator quietly. "The city… confuses them. It's too different. Too alien."

The team moved on, jumping the gap where necessary, taking things a little more slowly now. They were all remembering what had happened to the first team. There hadn't been any booby traps then. It was as though the city was learning how to defend itself from intruders.

Traps stuck at them from all sides, sudden and unexpected. Pointed metal spikes shot out of a wall and skewered a passing marine. He hung from the spikes like a butterfly on a pin, and then the spikes retreated into the wall and let his body drop to the floor. The metal made soft sucking noises as they left the marine's body: sinister sounds in the eerie quiet. The contact team pressed cautiously on, leaving the body where it lay. They'd retrieve it on the way back. If all went well. There were sudden bursts of heat and cold, both extreme enough to sear and burn exposed flesh. Once a howling followed them down the narrow way, shrieking in their ears, and then the sound sunk to a tone so low it shuddered in their bones. It did them no harm, so they ignored it. Compartments opened in the walls, full of mystery and strangeness, the sliding panels opening and slamming shut like snapping mouths. Gravity fluctuated from near freefall to a crushing weight that made every move an effort. One of the espers suddenly stopped in his tracks and started giggling. He laughed and laughed his sanity away, until one of the marines took pity on him and shot him in the head. The contact team pressed on. An hour had passed, and they had lost seven marines, one esper and one Wampyr who hadn't looked where he was walking.

Silence looked at Frost. "Are you sure this city is deserted?"

The Investigator shrugged. "As far as our instruments on the ship could tell, there were no life signs anywhere on the planet Or at least, nothing they recognized as life. And of course, they couldn't penetrate the Vaults. Perhaps the city itself is alive…"

"And hungry."

"Not necessarily. It's never wise to impute human motives to an alien consciousness. These incidents might be its way of trying to contact us."

"Then I hate to think what it's trying to say. Though I think we can safely assume it's not at all friendly."

"It could be a warning," said Frost slowly. "Telling us to go back, before we come to the Vault, and what waits within it."

"You're just full of cheerful information, aren't you?" said Silence. He looked back at the team trailing away behind him. "Stelmach, get your Wampyr up here. I want them leading the way now that we're getting closer to the Vault." Why?" said Stelmach.

"Well, firstly because they're much harder to kill, and secondly because I'm the Captain, and I said so. Do it."

"Their reaction speeds are superior to ours," said Stelmach, "and they can take much more punishment. But they're worth far too much to expose them to unnecessary risks."

"Stelmach, they are going to the front. One more word from you, and you can lead the way. Got it?"

The Security Officer considered the question a moment and then nodded reluctantly. The team moved slowly on, the Wampyr in the lead. The marines muttered among themselves, not sure whether to feel relieved or insulted. The city moved slowly past them, dark and glittering and possibly aware. And finally, after one hour and seventeen minutes, they came to the Vault.

It was huge, monolithic, its gleaming steel walls stretching away in all directions for as far as the lights could penetrate the darkness. The instruments went crazy over it, even those that had been functioning up until then. The Wampyr and the marines hung back, somewhat reluctant to approach the Vault now they'd finally reached it. It was too big, too vast for the human mind to comfortably encompass. Silence went up to it. Frost at his side. He reached out to touch the gleaming steel, and then hesitated at the last moment. It was as though there was a cold wind blowing constantly from the wall. He could feel it as a gentle pressure on his face. His reflection in the steel looked vague, distorted, like a ghost of himself, a premonition come back to warn him.

"Set up the force shield," he said harshly, turning away from the wall. "Once we've opened this thing up, I don't want anything getting past us and out into the city."

The marines came forward and bustled around setting up the force field generator, glad to be doing something they understood. It wasn't much of a generator, put together from parts they'd been carrying in their backpacks, but it would produce a force screen big enough to cover any hole they could hope to make in the Vault wall. The last marine finished his task with a little flourish and pressed the activating stud. A glowing force wall appeared, sealing off the team and their part of the wall from the rest of the city. They just had time to relax a little and look at each other confidently, and then the generator shorted out and the force field collapsed. Smoke curled up from the generator, and a few of the braver marines batted it aside with their hands as they looked the generator over, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Frost looked at Silence.

"Great start."

"Can you fix it?" Silence said to the marines.

"Doesn't actually appear to be anything wrong with it," came back a quiet, tentative voice. "I think it's just being too close to the Vault that did it. All my instruments are going crazy. The readings don't make any sense at all. But you can forget about the force shield. There's no way we can hope to fix this down here."

"How about the tangle field? That uses a lot less energy."

The marines stepped suddenly back from the generator. The solid frame was melting, running away in long shallow streams of plasteel. Silence looked at it numbly. That stuff had a melting point in the thousands. Any heat strong enough to melt the plasteel should have been more than enough to reduce the entire team surrounding it to ashes. Frost stepped forward and prodded one of the melting streams with the tip of her sword. The steel tip steamed, but seemed unharmed. The Investigator pulled back the sword and sniffed the point tentatively.

"Interesting," she said finally.

Anything else you'd like to add?" said Silence after a moment.

"Not right now," said Frost. "I'm going to have to think about this." She moved away, frowning thoughtfully.

"You do that," said Silence. He looked back at the marines. "Set up the disrupter cannon. Make sure you've got a good field of fire for the guns. Now it's more important than ever that nothing gets past us."

The marines set to work again, assembling the cannon from their packs. Stelmach moved in beside Steel.

"Do you really think they're going to work any better than the generator?"

Silence shrugged. "Damned if I know. But they'd better, or we've come all this way for nothing. According to the first team's record, it's going to take both of those cannon to make a hole in that wall."

"We don't know why some things work and some don't," said Frost, moving back to rejoin them. "We could lose anything at any time. Our guns, our lights…"

Stelmach shuddered suddenly. "Imagine being trapped down here in the dark."

Frost shrugged. "Wouldn't bother me."

"No," thought Silence, I don't suppose it would, at that. But even an Investigator needs to breathe. "Let's not panic ourselves, people. The first team had their difficulties, but it wasn't failing tech that killed them. The Sleepers did that. At least we've got the battle espers and the Wampyr, both of whose strengths are non-tech in origin. Speaking of which; espers, get over here."

They drifted over to stand before him, dull-eyed and listless. Silence looked at them sternly. "I'm turning off the esp-blockers. You're no use to me as you are now. Shield yourselves as best you can, but when we open up that wall, I want everything you've got trained on whatever comes out. Got it?"

The espers stared at him like children awaiting punishment. One of them looked at him with something like anger in his eyes.

"You should never have brought us here, Captain. We don't belong here, any of us. It's not a human place, with human limitations. There are things out there in the darkness that we dare not look at. If you expose us to them, we'll die."

"If you don't stop whining and get your act together, I'll kill you," snapped Silence. "You're battle espers, dammit. You're supposed to have been trained to handle things like this. Now brace yourselves."

He gestured to the marines to turn off the esp-blockers, and for a second nothing happened. And then the esper who'd spoken took a deep breath and stepped back a pace, and his head exploded. Silence cried out in disgust and shock as blood and brains spattered his uniform. Another esper began talking swiftly and urgently in a language no one recognized. The remaining espers huddled together as though for comfort, eyes closed, concentrating all the power of their unusual minds to protect themselves. Silence felt something like guilt stirring within him, but pushed it aside. He didn't have time.

"Are you stable now? Can we proceed with the mission?"

The espers nodded slowly in unison. One of them glared at Silence. "Do it. Do it while you still can. It knows we're here."

Silence turned to the marines manning the two disrupter cannon. The gleaming solidity and power of the guns reassured him. There was enough power there to blast a hole through a starship's hull.

"Everyone stand clear. On my order, fire both cannon. New!"

The two guns fired as one, the brilliant energy beams almost blinding in the gloom. Crackling energy played across the steel wall of the Vault without damaging it. And then slowly a door opened in the wall, twenty feet high and a dozen wide, swinging reluctantly back as though the sheer pressure of the guns had forced it to reveal itself. The energy beams snapped off, and everyone stared breathlessly at the darkness beyond the door, now half ajar.

Silence's hand tightened round his gun till his knuckles ached, bracing himself for a flood of ravening alien life, but there was nothing, nothing at all. It was very quiet now that the cannon had stopped firing. The only sound was the massed breathing of the expectant contact team. And then a single alien leapt out of the doorway, and blood flew on the air as it tore into the team with an insane fury.

It was huge and awful, but all Silence got was an impression of glistening scarlet armor and jagged steel teeth. It moved among them, fast as thought, ripping and tearing a path through the marines with its teeth and claws, picking marines up and throwing them away as though they were nothing. Everyone was firing their guns, but the alien was never where they aimed. It was huge and fast and deadly and it seemed to be everywhere at once. Disrupter beams blazed across the narrow space, cutting down two marines and one of the Wampyr. And then the battle espers hit the creature with a wave of psychokinetic force, holding it in place through the sheer power of their minds. It looked like a nightmare in spiked bloodred armor, vaguely humanoid in form, its heart-shaped head lacking anything like a human lace or expression.

For a moment everyone was still, and then the Wampyr swarmed over the alien, trying to pull it down with their superior strength, but already the hold of the espers was weakening. Without the esp-blockers to protect them, the city was just too much to bear. The alien turned its inhuman head, and beams of crackling energy burst from its mouth and eyes, blowing people apart in sudden bloody explosions. It gestured sharply, and new spikes thrust out of its armor, transfixing the gripping Wampyr. Black blood spurted from their mouths, but they didn't scream and they wouldn't release their holds. Shrapnel exploded from the bloodred armor, blowing some of the Wampyr away like bloody pincushions.

"Mindburn the thing!" yelled Silence, but the espers couldn't hear him. Blood was running from their noses and ears and eyes, trickling down their straining faces like crimson tears, and their hold on the alien suddenly vanished. It shook off the remaining Wampyr as though they were nothing. Frost stepped forward, took careful aim with her disrupter, and shot the creature in the head at point-blank range. The energy beam ricocheted from the scarlet armor and glanced off into the darkness, leaving the alien untouched. It took the last surviving Wampyr in both hands, ripped off its head and threw it away, and chewed at the bloody neck like a child with a treat. And then it turned and looked at Silence and Frost standing together and smiled a bloody smile, like a demon from some cybernetic hell.

Silence glanced quickly about him. All the Wampyr were dead, and Stelmach looked to be in shock. Only two of the espers were still standing, and seven of the marines. Silence felt sick. It didn't seem possible that so many could have been killed so quickly. Frost put away her gun and pulled an incendiary grenade from her belt. Silence put a restraining hand on her arm.

"Use that grenade at this range, and the backblast'll fry all of us. Plus, there's no guarantee it would even work. That ugly-looking bastard shrugged off energy beams easily enough."

Frost smiled briefly. "I was going to make him eat it."

"Not a bad idea," said Silence, "but we've still got one last card to play. Stelmach! Time for that secret weapon of yours!"

The Security Officer stared at him blankly, his eyes wide with shock. Silence cursed briefly. He started toward Stelmach, and the alien threw aside the Wampyr body it was holding and started toward him with slow, almost casual steps. It knew he had nowhere to go. Silence fired his disrupter, aiming for the glowing eyes. The energy beam glanced harmlessly away. Frost hefted her grenade and lunged forward. The alien slapped her away with a backhand sweep of its overlong arm. She crashed into the steel wall of the Vault and slumped dazed to the floor, the grenade falling unactivated from her hand. Silence gripped his sword fiercely. The alien's smile seemed very wide and very bloody.

And then Stelmach activated his secret weapon, and everything slowed right down. A glowing golden field formed around the alien, and it froze in its tracks, mouth still stretched in a crimson grin. A draining cold surged through Silence's bones, and it took all his strength to move away. His thoughts grew slow and sluggish, and then he had Frost by the arm and was dragging her clear off the field. After a moment, she was able to help him, and the two of them stumbled back to join Stelmach by his quietly humming machine. Life quickly came back to them, and Silence nodded to the Security Officer.

"I'm glad I brought you along after all. What the hell is that device?"

"Stasis projector; puts anything into stasis from practically any distance. Eats up power like crazy, but this was pretty much point-blank."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," said Frost, her voice perhaps just a little shaken, "but I thought the whole point of a stasis field was that you couldn't project it? You set it up where you need it, and then turn it on or off."

"Not anymore," said Stelmach.

"And," said Silence, just a little touchily, "how come that projector's working when nothing else is?"

"This little beauty is based on different technology," said Stelmach. "The same technology that produced the new stardrive. Need I say more? No, I didn't think so. Apparently this technology is somewhat sturdier than our own. Perhaps even compatible… Even so, I recommend we get the alien upstairs and under wraps as quickly as possible. Just in case."

"Hold on just a minute," said Silence. "Why didn't you use the damn thing the moment the alien appeared, instead of waiting till most of us were dead?"

"Right," said Frost, dangerously.

"Ah," said Stelmach. "Basically, the techs who provided me with this device weren't actually one hundred percent sure it would work. In fact, they seemed to think there was a small but significant chance that the whole thing could detonate rather dramatically once it was turned on. Which is why I put off using it until I absolutely had to."

"No wonder they wouldn't tell me what it was," said Silence. "If I'd known that, I wouldn't have let it on board my ship. Ah, hell, the alien's all yours. Get it out of my sight."

Stelmach manipulated the controls of his projector, and the alien floated slowly forward, hovering barely an inch above the floor, buoyed up by the stasis field. The Security Officer moved cautiously forward, steering the alien ahead of him, and the two of them disappeared into the darkness that led back to the surface. Silence gestured for four marines to go after Stelmach and his prize, and then looked around to see how many of his people had survived the alien's attack. He was saddened but not surprised to find he had only two more marines and one esper left in his team. Everyone else was dead, their bloody remains scattered before the opening in the Vault wall. He shook his head slowly. So many dead, just to capture one of the creatures… The thought took hold of him suddenly, and he took a step toward the door in the wall. This time. Frost grabbed him by the arm.

"Way ahead of you, Captain. Now that the Vault's opened, where are all the other Sleepers? There were thousands of the things in the first Vault. Even so, I don't think just casually walking into the Vault to take a look is a good idea."

"All right," said Silence. "What do you suggest?"

"We've got one esper left. Let him work for his pay."

Silence and Frost looked at the single surviving esper, and he looked back at them with a bitter resignation. He was tall and slender, with a tired, washed-out look, colorless blond hair, pale blue eyes and a surprisingly firm mouth. Silence reminded himself that this man had survived when his fellow espers hadn't.

"You don't have to do this," he said quietly. "You've done more than enough already, and I'll see you're mentioned in my report. But we have to know what's going on in that vault, and you're all we've got."

"I know," said the esper in a voice too tired even to be angry. "In the end, it always comes down to me and my kind, doesn't it?"

He moved toward the Vault wall without waiting for an answer and stopped just inside the doorway. His back straightened with a snap, and a shocked gasp escaped his lips. Silence stared after him, and the esper waved him back without looking round.

"I'm all right. I just wasn't prepared for this when I opened my mind. All I can see is space, stretching away in all directions. No life, or trace of life. We got here too late. Whatever happened here, it's over."

"Any idea of what happened?" said Silence.

"It's too big," said the esper. "I feel like a fly crawling across the stained-glass window of a cathedral and trying to comprehend its function."

"Whatever happened here, it must have left impressions," said Frost. "Go deeper. We have to know. What happened to the other Sleepers?"

The esper groaned loudly, cords of muscle standing out in his neck. "The violence… death and slaughter and more … the walls are full of it. There were thousands of the aliens here, too many to count, packed together like insects in a hive. Sleeping. Waiting. Then something broke in and woke them up. Ghost Warriors."

Silence and Frost looked at each other. Ghost Warriors were human corpses used as weapons, guided by computer implants, controlled by the rogue AIs of Shub.

"The Vault was swarming with them, fighting the aliens, armed with strange weapons I don't recognize. And in the end, they pulled the Sleepers down by sheer force of numbers and dragged them away. They took the damaged Ghost Warriors, too, for repairing and recycling later. The Warriors weren't affected by the city because they weren't really here; their controllers were safe back on Shub. Maybe it wouldn't have affected them anyway; the AIs don't think like we do."

For a long moment, the esper didn't say anything. Silence cleared his throat. "Why did they leave one alien behind?"

"As a surprise for whoever came after them. The AIs wanted you to know what happened here. They're going to make Ghost Warriors out of the Sleepers and turn them loose on the Empire. Give me your disrupter. Captain."

Silence frowned. "Is there something still in there?"

"Just give me your gun, Captain."

Silence stepped forward and the esper turned unhurriedly to take the disrupter. Silence caught a glimpse of the Vault's interior, and looked away as he stepped back. The esper was right. It was too big. The esper hefted the gun in his hand, as though surprised by the weight. Perhaps he was. Espers weren't usually allowed weapons. He looked at Silence calmly.

"I've seen what Shub has planned for us. It's horrible. I have no wish to see it happen. Goodbye, Captain. It's been… interesting. I'd damn you and the Empire to hell, but hell is coming for you anyway."

And he put the gun to his head, and shot himself. Silence cursed as the headless body slumped to the floor and knelt down to pry his disrupter from the esper's hand. "Damn. That is not going to look good on my report. I should have known better than to give him a gun."

Frost shrugged. "Espers. Fragile, all of them."

Silence straightened up and bolstered his gun. "Sleeper Ghost Warriors… they'd be unstoppable in the field. But why come here now? Are they planning a new offensive? And if so, when and where? We'd better get back to the ship. The Empire has to know about this."

"Something else to think about," said Frost. "How did the Ghost Warriors break through our quarantine? The Captain of the Defiant was quite definite that nothing had got past him, let alone landed on Grendel, broke open the Vaults and carried away the Sleepers. The only answer that makes sense is that the AIs on Shub have developed some really effective new cloaking technology, powerful enough to blind all our sensors. Which is really bad news for all of us. It means the Ghost Warriors could strike anywhere, anytime, and the first we'd know of it would be when their attack ships started blasting our cities. We wouldn't even be able to fight back; what use would our energy weapons be without sensors to aim them?"

"If you've quite finished lowering our morale, I've got something else that'll spoil your day," said Silence. "We're going to have to check out all the other Vaults on Grendel, one by one, to see if they've been opened and emptied by the Ghost Warriors. And you saw what opening up just this one did to us."

"Join the Fleet and see the universe. We have to be sure, Captain. There's always Stelmach's machine."

"For as long as it holds up under these conditions. We can't trust anything down here. Anything at all."

Back on the bridge of the Dauntless, Silence sat slumped in his command chair and tried hard not to fall asleep through sheer weariness. He'd taken a little something to keep him awake and alert, but it was taking a long time kicking in. Frost stood beside his chair, cool and collected as always. She looked as fresh and fit as if she'd just arrived on duty, but then, she always did. That was an Investigator's training for you. The rest of his team were a mess. The few surviving marines were sleeping off sedation down in the med bay, recovering from shock and battle fatigue and exposure to the alien city. Silence felt very much that he would have liked to join them, but there was still work to be done. He had a hundred and twenty marines still on board, but he wasn't about to risk them down in the undercity until he had some idea on how to protect them. The battle espers and the Wampyr were all dead. It bothered him that he didn't care as much about their deaths as he did for the marines. He shook his head. He had more important things to think about. Like how Stelmach was getting on with examining the captured Sleeper down in the science lab. Silence raised the Security Officer on his personal screen. The man looked tired and preoccupied.

"Anything you feel like sharing with us yet, Stelmach?"

"Not much. The Sleeper is so different from what we normally consider as life that half my instruments won't work on it. What information I am getting is enough to turn your hair white. One thing is becoming clearer all the time. This is a genetically engineered creature: a living killing machine, the perfect warrior class. Almost literally unbeatable on the physical level. We only beat it by cheating."

"The Ghost Warriors beat them."

"Yes, but according to the esper, they had weapons and numbers far superior to ours. Shub's always been twenty years ahead of us. If not more. I'll get back to you later, when I've got something more significant to say. Stelmach out."

His face had only just disappeared from Silence's private screen when the image suddenly cleared, and Silence found himself looking at the stern face of the Imperial Communications Officer on Golgotha. Silence sat up straight in his chair and tried to look alert.

"Captain Silence, you have new orders. These supercede ail previous orders. You are to leave Officer Stelmach and his captive with the Defiant and proceed immediately to the planet Shandrakor. The traitor Owen Deathstalker is traveling there with other enemies of the Empire, including the notorious Jack Random. A spy in their company has provided us with the exact coordinates for Shandrakor. You are to capture these people alive. They have knowledge of the exact location for the Darkvoid Device. You are hereby authorized to take any and all actions necessary to retrieve the Device and return it to the Empire. After you have the Device, you may execute the outlaws. This information is classified, your eyes only. Message ends."

His face vanished from the screen. Silence looked at Frost. "Officially, you didn't hear that."

"Of course not, Captain. Pity we're leaving Grendel just as it was getting interesting. Still, the Deathstalker, Random and the Device… now that's what I call a mission."

"The Darkvoid Device," said Silence. "I can't believe that nightmare's turned up again after all these years."

"We'd better hope it has," said Frost. "It's about the only thing I can think of that could take on the AIs on Shub, if they really are turning the Sleepers into Ghost Warriors. Still, Jack Random and the Deathstalker… I'll enjoy killing them."

"I thought you'd like that bit," Silence said dryly. "Just remember we have to get our hands on the Device first. Dead men don't share secrets. So, Shandrakor here we come. I always thought that planet was a myth, a legend, like the Wolfling World. Just goes to show."

"What?"

"Pardon?"

"It just goes to show what?"

"I don't know," said Silence. "Something."

"Very erudite," said Frost. "Well, here's one more thing for you to think about. Stelmach seemed pretty sure that the Sleepers were genetically engineered, which suggests rather strongly that they must have been created with a particular purpose in mind. Or at the very least, a particular enemy. What do you suppose could be so dangerous, so deadly, that the Sleepers had to be created to fight it? And is it still out there somewhere, just waiting for us to stumble over it?"

Silence looked at her for a moment. "I don't know why I keep you around, Investigator. You can be really depressing when you put your mind to it."

Frost nodded calmly. "It's a gift."