Deathstalker Rebellion

by Simon R. Green

  "Get your ass over here, Investigator!" yelled Silence. "We are leaving!"

  Frost turned and ran for the elevator without hesitation, There was no dishonor in running from Ghost Warriors. They'd keep coming as long as their computer implants remained intact, no matter what state their bodies might be in. The only answer to this many Ghost Warriors was massed disrupter cannon. She threw herself into the elevator, and the security men let the elevator doors close behind her. Dead fists beat against the doors, denting the metal, but Silence had already hit the up button. He hit it a few more times, just in case, and took a deep breath as the elevator began to rise.

  "Dauntless, this is Silence. Do you hear me?"

  "Loud and clear, Captain."

  "Check the sensors. Any life-form readings on the Champion's bridge?"

  "No, Captain."

  "Damn. All right; we are heading back to the pinnace in a hurry. This ship is crawling with Ghost Warriors. You are not to allow the pinnace or any other vessel from the Champion to dock with you until sensors have confirmed that only the living are aboard. Once we've docked, open up with everything you've got until there's nothing left of the Champion but a few glowing atoms. If we can't get to you and you consider the Dauntless to be in danger, forget us and blow the Champion apart anyway. We are expendable. Is that clear, Dauntless?"

  "Clear, Captain," said the calm voice of his Second in Command. "We'll give you every second we can, but you must be docked before we open fire. Otherwise, the energy will fry you."

  "I know. But the Dauntless's safety comes first. Confirm."

  "Confirmed, Captain. Good luck."

  The elevator slowed suddenly, catching them all off balance. The security man at the controls swore dispassionately. "Something's fighting my override. I don't know how much longer I can maintain control, Captain."

  "Stop at the next floor," said Silence. "We're getting off. Can't risk being taken back down again."

  The security man nodded, and the elevator lurched to a halt. The doors opened, and Silence and his people spilled out into an empty corridor, swords at the ready. Silence accessed his map of the Champion again, displaying it on the inside of his helmet. They were seven floors down and quite a distance away from the air lock that would give them access to their pinnace. They'd have to stick to the walkways and hope the Ghost Warriors didn't have some way to block them. He dismissed the map and looked at the two security men. Their blank helmets stared impassively back at him, waiting for orders.

  "There's no point in going back to the bridge," Silence said evenly. "Your comrades are dead. And I never even knew their names. Tell me yours."

  One of the men indicated himself, and then his friend. "Corporal Abrams and Corporal Fine, sir. Don't mind Fine. He doesn't say much."

  "Pleased to meet you, Corporals. If we get back to the Dauntless alive, you're both Sergeants. Now let's get moving. Frost, take the point. Cross, watch our rear. Move it, people!"

  And so they ran, back through the deserted corridors of the death ship, the hammering of their armored boots on the steel floor a constant roll of thunder, prophesying a storm to come. Silence flashed the map up on his inner helmet again, counting off the floors and levels as they drew slowly closer to where they'd left the pinnace. His heart was pounding, and his breath tore at his lungs. Even with the servomechanisms to help, the hard suit was heavy and clumsy, not designed for running in. And deep down inside him, he knew he'd forgotten something. Something important. He snarled silently inside his helmet and tried vainly to increase his pace. It was taking too long. The Ghost Warriors could be right behind them. He checked his suit's sensors again, but there was no trace of movement anywhere in their limited range. Which probably meant the dead men knew a short cut. He checked the map again, but he couldn't see a quicker route than the one Frost had already chosen. They'd get to the pinnace first. They had to.

  And finally there was only one corridor left between them and safety, and the whole group found a second wind that brought them pounding around the final corner, and there they came crashing to a halt. Silence just stood there, a dozen yards from the air lock, his head filled with his own harsh breathing, his heart filled with despair. Between his small force and the air lock stood a hundred Ghost Warriors, eerily unprotected against the airless cold, with the dead Captain Pearce at their head. No, thought Silence numbly. That's not possible, there's no way they could have beaten us here! But these are dead men, a small voice murmured in the back of his mind. Maybe they know ways that the living cannot walk. His thoughts whirled crazily as he tried desperately to think of something, anything he could do to steal a victory from the jaws of certain defeat. Pearce smiled at Silence and Frost, his head perched crookedly on his broken neck.

  "It's over. You must come with us now. The laboratories are waiting."

  "To hell with that," said Frost calmly. She pulled a concussion grenade from her belt, primed it, and tossed it neatly into the middle of the massed Ghost Warriors. They barely had time to react before it blew, and the force of the blast threw dead men in all directions. Frost and the rest of her party hardly rocked on their heels, protected by their heavy hard suits. Silence laughed suddenly, back in the game again, and strode toward the air lock, kicking thrashing bodies out of his way. The others followed him, knocking the dead men down as fast as they got to their feet. The dead grabbed at their legs to try and hold them, but dead arms were no match for the hard suit's servomechanisms.

  Silence hit the controls, and the air-lock doors cycled slowly open. The two security men were hacking at everything in sight with their swords, and dead flesh flew in the air though no blood flowed. The doors finally opened wide enough, and Silence yelled for his people to break free.

  "Move it, people! We are leaving!"

  Abrams and Fine broke away and threw themselves into the air lock. Cross went to follow them, then stopped as a dead man rose up before him. Cross raised his sword and then hesitated as he took in the gray face before him. It was a familiar face from an old holofilm, and it took him only a moment to place it.

  "Grandfather…"

  And in that moment the dead man raised an old-fashioned disrupter, placed it against Cross's armored belly, and pressed the stud. The energy blast punched right through the hard suit and out the back. Cross screamed, the horrified sound filling Silence's ears through his comm link, and then he crumpled slowly to the floor. Silence swung his sword with all his suit's power behind it, and sheered clean through the dead man's neck. The headless body fell away, and Silence sheathed the sword and grabbed Cross by the shoulders. He pulled the screaming man into the air lock and turned to look out at Frost, standing with her back to the doors, sword in hand.

  "Get in here, Investigator! We are leaving!"

  "I'm not coming with you, Captain." Frost didn't turn around, but her voice came clearly through Silence's comm implant on the command channel, as though she was standing right beside him. "I have to stay behind. Otherwise, one of these undead bastards will just hit the override from this side and keep the air lock from functioning. I have to stay here to hold them off while the rest of you go through to the pinnace. I've known this all along. You never did think ahead enough, Captain."

  "We'll risk it," said Silence. "Now, get in here. That's an order. We're not leaving without you."

  "You have to," said the Investigator unemotionally. "It's vital you get away, to report what happened here. The Empire must know that Shub is using stolen ships with dead crews. Once you reach the Dauntless, blow this death ship apart."

  "I can't open fire while you're still aboard!"

  "Of course you can. It's the logical thing to do."

  "You didn't leave me to die on the bridge of the Darkwind."

  "That was different. There's too much at stake here. And at least my way, they won't be able to make a Ghost Warrior out of me. Please, John. It's the only way."

  She hit the air-lock controls with her elbow, and the doors closed. Silence ha
d one last glimpse of the Investigator throwing herself against the advancing dead men, and then the doors were shut and she was gone. He turned away to operate the outer doors. He didn't say anything. He didn't trust his voice. His arms and legs were shaking inside his suit, from tension and something more. Cross was still screaming. The two security men had slapped temporary seals over the holes in his armor so he'd survive the crossing to the pinnace. One of them gave the all clear to Silence, and he opened the outer doors. It took them only a few moments to cross the empty space to the pinnace's lock and pass through that into the waiting ship. Cross fell silent as the emergency drugs the hard suit was pumping into him finally took effect. Abrams and Fine secured him in a seat and then strapped themselves in. Silence took the pilot's seat and patched into the pinnace's emergency channel.

  "Dauntless, this is the Captain. I'm on my way back. I have three men with me, one seriously injured. We're all that made it out. The Champion is infested with Ghost Warriors. As soon as we're clear, open up with everything you've got. Destroy the Champion. Confirm."

  "This is the Dauntless," said his Second in Command. We confirm. Destroy the Champion as soon as you've docked."

  It took only a few minutes to maneuver the pinnace back to the Dauntless and dock it, but they seemed to last forever, and all the time Silence saw a single valiant figure, fighting an army of dead men and hoping for a quick death from the Dauntless's guns. He patched into the main ship's sensors, and watched silently as cannon after cannon opened fire on the Champion. Her shields flared into existence immediately, but they were old, inferior shields, and the Dauntless's superior firepower battered them down and slapped them aside. Disrupter bolts hit the old ship again and again, blowing jagged holes in the hull. Escaping energies burned silently in the dark, until finally the Champion exploded in a bloody ball of hellfire, glowing brightly in the long night. Good-bye, Frost, said the Captain silently. I'll miss you.

  He broke the comm link and sank back in his chair, feeling suddenly very tired. The two security men were manhandling an unconscious Cross out the air lock. He couldn't really believe that she was dead yet. He could still feel her presence through his metal link, like a ghost in his head, but presumably that would fade away in time, like the phantom pain from an amputated limb.

  "Captain, this is Stelmach," said a familiar voice in his ear suddenly. "We're getting strange readings here on the bridge. There are reports of fighting coming in from all over the ship. Intruders, appearing from nowhere, killing our people. There are energy weapons discharging on all levels. Dear God, Captain, they're Ghost Warriors!"

  "No," said Silence. "That's not possible."

  "They're here, Captain. I can see them through the security cameras! How the hell did they get off the Champion! We didn't track any escaping craft."

  "They teleported," said Silence. "The bastards teleported! That's what I'd forgotten. Remember what we saw at Court? Shub has the secret of long-range teleportation! Set up interior force shields throughout the ship, cutting off all infected areas. Have repair teams standing by in case disrupters puncture the shell. And warm up the auto-destruct. Just in case."

  And Frost died for nothing.

  "Where's the nearest trouble site, Stelmach?"

  "Two or three quite near you, Captain. Biggest group is one level down, Delta section, but the security force I sent hasn't got there yet. You'd better stay clear till I get word it's been secured."

  "Hell with that," said Silence. "This is my ship. I go where I'm needed. I have business with these murderous bastards. Silence out."

  He ran down the corridor, pushing the hard suit to its limits, and all he could think of was making the Ghost Warriors pay for Frost's death. He'd build a mountain of heads in her name. She'd like that. But it wouldn't be enough. It would never be enough. He took the elevator down to the next level, clenching and unclenching his hands impatiently. The doors opened to sounds of chaos not far away. There were shouts and screams and the sound of energy weapons discharging. That last brought him out of the elevator in a run. They weren't too far from the outer hull in Delta section, and all it would take was one really unlucky shot to puncture the hull. Explosive decompression probably wouldn't bother the Ghost Warriors much, but it would play hell with everyone else. Silence was suddenly very glad he'd kept his hard suit on.

  He rounded a corner and came upon a heaving mob of human defenders, struggling to contain a large group of Ghost Warriors. There were wounded and unmoving bodies sprawled everywhere, but in the midst of the living dead men, holding their attention almost single-handedly, was a defiant figure in a battered hard suit, swinging a long sword with both hands. Silence grinned so hard it hurt. He didn't need to see the suit's colors to know who was behind that featureless helmet. No wonder he'd still been able to feel her presence. When the Ghost Warriors teleported their people off the Champion, they'd brought Frost with them! Probably unwilling to give up such an important specimen. Silence roared his Clan's battle cry and threw himself into the heart of the battle, hacking left and right with vicious sweeping arcs. He cut a path through the dead, unfeeling flesh, laughing as he went, until he was able to put his back against that of the armored figure. They fought well and fiercely, and the Ghost Warriors couldn't get anywhere near them.

  "Hi," said Frost's voice in his ear. "Miss me?"

  "Not for a minute," said Silence. "I knew you were too cussed to die."

  "That is what it was all about, you know," the Investigator said casually in between blows. "Use the Champion to pull us in, distract us with strange voices, and then take over the Dauntless. With you and I as Ghost Warriors, carefully preserved and disguised, Shub could have used us to get in striking range of the Empress herself. Which is presumably why they saved me when the Champion went up. Crafty inhuman bastards. I'm quite impressed."

  Silence was too busy to reply. Captain Pearce had turned up again, his head still at an angle, but as determined as ever. He had an old-fashioned disrupter in his hand, but Silence slapped it out of his grasp with a swift, casual movement. The two Captains went head to head, the living and the dead, swords soaring as they slammed together and sprang away, inhumanly fast. Pearce had a strength and speed beyond anything a living man could normally produce, but Silence had been changed in the Madness Maze, and he wasn't merely human anymore, either. The hard suit's servomechanisms strained to keep up with him as he swept aside Pearce's attack and defenses alike and dueled him to a standstill. He lifted his sword and brought it down in one blindingly swift movement, and the heavy blade hammered into Pearce's skull, sinking deep into his head till it finally jarred to a halt on an eyesocket. Pearce convulsed as his sundered computer implant crashed and fell apart. Silence jerked his sword free, and Pearce fell twitching to the floor.

  There were still more Ghost Warriors. Silence fought on, back-to-back with Frost, cool and calm and quite collected. Strength and speed burned within him, and he felt like he could fight forever. He was linked with Frost again, on every physical and mental level, fighting in that calm twilight state when the sum of the two of them was far greater than their separate parts. And suddenly, there was no one left to fight. The Ghost Warriors lay broken and decapitated all around, and the surviving crew members were wildly cheering their Captain and their Investigator. Which had to be something of a first for Frost, Silence thought as he looked serenely around him. Usually, people cheered Investigators only when they were leaving. He turned to look at Frost, who had turned at the same moment to look at him. They reached up and took off their helmets, and their eyes met in a moment of understanding and appreciation that could never be unsaid or forgotten.

  "We're not even breathing hard," Silence said quietly. "What are we becoming?"

  "Better," said Frost.

  "Inhuman, perhaps."

  Frost shrugged as best she could inside her suit. "Humanity's overrated sometimes."

  Silence was still trying to come up with an answer to that, which didn't involve r
aising his voice, when Stelmach's voice sounded in his ear again. The Security Officer sounded very upset.

  "Captain! There are Ghost Warriors all over the ship! Hundreds of them!"

  "Tell me something I don't know," said Silence. "Are we holding our own against them?"

  "Barely. We're afraid to use our disrupters much, but they're not. The largest group is heading for the bridge, despite everything we can do to slow them down. We've only got one chance. From my work with controlling the Grendel aliens, I'm pretty sure the computers controlling the Ghost Warriors must have a central control mechanism, separate from the bodies it moves. Some mechanism they brought with them when they teleported over from the Champion. A single cybernetic mind running its meat puppets. I've had Communications scanning the comm channels for unauthorized transmissions, and we've detected one hell of a powerful signal coming from the main hangars in Epsilon section. That's got to be it."

  "Good work, Stelmach," said Silence. "The Investigator and I are on our way. Send as many men as you can after us. If we fail, defend the bridge till it's obvious there's no hope, and then hit the self-destruct. Whatever happens, this ship and its crew is not to fall under Shub's control."