Deathstalker Rebellion

CHAPTER SIX

Voices in the Dark

It gets strange out on the Rim. The starship Dauntless hammered through the darkness, a small silver speck in the long night. Captain John Silence sat in his command chair on the Dauntless's bridge, staring somberly at the main viewscreen before him. Not that there was much to see on the viewscreen. This latest tour of duty had brought him right to the edge of the Rim, where the normality of suns and planets and life gave way to the endless empty dark of the Darkvoid, which knew nothing of light and life. Except for the Wolfling World, whose mysterious depths held an army of reborn Hadenmen and the beginnings of a new rebellion. Silence's mouth flattened into a grim line. He'd been driven from that world in failure and disgrace, but even so he was in no hurry to return there in search of revenge. Unnatural powers had manifested in the dim vast caverns below that planet's surface, forces and events almost beyond human comprehension. Forces that had touched and tainted him, too. The Wolfling World was a dangerous place, and Silence had decided very firmly that he wasn't going back there without the entire Imperial Fleet to back him up. He knew the difference between courage and a suicide mission. It was essential that the rebellion gestating inside the Wolfling World be damped out and eradicated, but until he could convince the Empress of that, Silence had every intention of keeping a safe distance between him and the only living planet in the Darkvoid.

He sighed and shifted position yet again in his chair. He'd been on the bridge ten hours now, well past the end of his watch, but there was no point in standing down. He couldn't rest, and he couldn't sleep. Too many things had been happening recently. Disturbing things. His mission had seemed straightforward enough when Lionstone outlined it for him: patrol those planets in the Empire dominated by sentient alien species, and make it clear to them that they were to have no contact with any alien forces from outside the Empire or any rebel forces within it. Make promises of increased support on the one hand and threats of dire reprisals for disobedience on the other. The carrot and the bloody big stick. Never fails, with humans. But those few alien civilizations that had survived being brought within the Empire were anything but human.

It was quiet this far out on the Rim, far from Empire, traffic, and populated planets. The Dauntless was very alone, and sometimes that loneliness seemed almost too much to bear. Half the crew were taking tranquilizers or dosing themselves with illicit booze. Silence turned a blind eye. They all needed a little something extra to help them survive the soul-deep cold of the long night. Everyone except Frost, of course. Investigator Frost stood at parade rest beside Silence's command chair, as calm and composed as always. She'd been quietly studying the viewscreen for some time, but she didn't need to say anything for Silence to know she was impatient with the endless monotony. Frost always preferred to be doing something, and the long weeks of inactivity out on the edge of the Rim had been hard on her. It was a long way between the few alien planets, even with the new stardrive, and Frost was frankly bored. Personally, Silence felt he could live with a little boredom. Only a few more planets to visit and their mission would be officially over; though whether they would be allowed to return to the more inhabited sectors of the Empire remained to be seen. They knew too many things the Empress didn't want discussed.

But it wasn't just boredom and loneliness that made Silence so uneasy about being so far from the heart of the Empire. The new rebellion could begin at any time, led by people who'd become almost superhuman and aided by an army of the deadly augmented men. This rebellion, when it came, wouldn't be put down as easily as all the others. Silence felt a burning need, almost an obsession, to be back in his rightful place, orbiting Golgotha, protecting the Empress. Lionstone hadn't taken his reports about the strength of the new rebellion and its leaders anywhere near seriously enough. He'd tried explaining his concern to Frost, expecting a sympathetic ear, but she'd just shrugged and said if there was an Empire-wide rebellion, there'd be fighting enough for everyone, no matter where they were. Frost had always been a practical person, first and foremost.

Silence drummed his fingers on the armrests of his chair. Somewhere deep inside him, a small but persistent voice was clamoring for a drink to settle his nerves, but he wouldn't listen to it. He'd tried that, and it hadn't worked. He'd managed to climb back out of the bottle, with a little help from Frost, and he wouldn't give in to it again. He'd pulled himself back from the brink of failure and disgrace with his victory over the alien ship above Golgotha, and having been granted another chance against all the odds, he was damned if he'd be beaten by his own weaknesses. It had taken a while, but his crew had learned to respect him again, which pleased him. They were a good crew, mostly, and he wanted to be a strong Captain for them. Of course, there were still dark murmurs in occasional dark corners, where people wrongly thought the ship's security systems couldn't overhear them. The word belowdecks was that just possibly Silence and/or Frost were jinxed. Bad luck. Jonahs. Unfortunate things happened around them. After all, Silence had lost his last ship, the Darkwind, in a clash with pirates, and their last mission to the Wolfling World had gone to hell in a handcart in a hurry. And as everyone knows, went the murmur, bad things come in threes. Sweepstakes were running among the more superstitious crew members—not about whether something else really nasty would happen, but about what shape it would take when it did.

Silence let them get on with it. On the whole the crew were still sharp and well coordinated, performing their duties at an entirely acceptable level. The victory over the alien ship had raised their spirits and returned their confidence after the debacle of the Wolfling World. And most of them had lost someone they loved or knew someone who had during the alien ship's attack on Golgotha's main starport and city. An undercurrent of anger and a need for revenge burned in the crew's collective heart, hot and ugly. So far Silence hadn't been able to find a target or an outlet for it, but he had no doubt one would emerge eventually. Some alien species would do or say the wrong thing, and have to be punished. And then Silence would sit back and let the crew sink themselves in violence and revenge until it sickened them. A bit hard on the aliens, but after all, that was what they were there for.

On the whole Silence had chosen to let Frost take charge of the alien contacts. It was her area of expertise, after all. And if he was sometimes uncomfortable with some of her more extreme practices, he kept it to himself. She was responsible for the safety of the human species, and if that meant being ruthless as well as efficient, Frost had never been known to give a damn. Silence smiled slightly, in spite of himself. Certainly the Investigator had never been trained in diplomacy; or if she had, had gone out of her way to forget it. She just aimed herself at whatever passed for the aliens' authority figures, made her demands on behalf of the Empress, and issued dire warnings and threats of what would happen if she was disobeyed. It was often as blunt as that, but she got results. Silence had his reservations, but couldn't bring himself to disapprove. The safety of humanity had to come first.

He'd been the same himself, cold and curt and full of authority, until it backfired on him on a backwater planet called Unseeli. The native species rebelled over the Empire's extensive mining operations on their planet. The Empire needed those mines, and so the newly promoted Captain Silence had been sent to put a stop to the rebellion, by whatever means necessary. He tried diplomacy, and then he tried firmness, force, and finally all-out war. But there turned out to be strange secrets and powers moving on Unseeli, and things got out of hand fast. Silence had been forced to pull his people back from the planet and order the entire world scorched clean from orbit. That particular alien species was now extinct, though their ghosts still haunted Unseeli's metallic forest.

Silence's frown deepened as he considered the contacts he'd made with the alien planets so far. Few had gone well, but in the end he'd got what the Empire wanted without having to order another scorching. He wasn't sure he could do that again. Though he had no doubt that if the occasion arose and he didn't give the order, Frost would. And who was to say which one of them was right in the end? Humanity had to be protected, and while all the alien contacts had been strange and unusual, some had been actually disturbing. Life had taken many shapes and purposes throughout the Empire, and few of them were human in form or intent. Many were mysterious, obscure, and even impenetrable. Silence wasn't sure some of them even knew they were in the Empire.

* * *

Shanna IV was a desolate world, with endless plains of hard-baked ground, and its only water deep underground. A huge, brilliant sun beat down from a blinding sky that had never known clouds, and the only signs of intelligent life were the huge pyramids of resin-hardened stone and sand, built long ago by the planet's only inhabitants. Each pyramid was exactly like all the others, though they might be thousands of miles apart. Four hundred feet high, their lines were sharp and their dull red sides were smooth and featureless. No one knew what was inside them, or even if there was an inside; none of the Empire's investigative teams had been able to find an entrance. Being Investigators, they'd tried making one, only to discover the pyramids' smooth sides were impervious to anything the Empire could throw against them, up to and including major energy weapons. Which should have been impossible for resin-hardened stone and sand. Eventually, the Empire decided it didn't really care what was inside the pyramids after all, and concentrated its attention on the planet's current inhabitants, who might or might not have been the builders of the pyramids.

These were ugly, hard-shelled insects about the size of a man's fist, with razor-sharp mandibles and entirely too many legs. They seemed to have no individual identity, but en masse they were capable of producing a group mind that could, with some difficulty, be communicated with. Which was just as well, as the horrible scuttling things were also capable, with a little prodding, of producing a great many organic compounds the Empire found useful. So the Empire provided the base materials; the insects ate and excreted it, and possibly did other things to it in their pyramids when no one was looking, and the end result was a series of extremely complex chemical forms that would be hideously expensive to reproduce in a laboratory. The Empire profited, the insects got protection from outside influences but were otherwise left strictly alone, and everyone was happy. Or at least no one complained.

Captain Silence and Investigator Frost stood at the base of one of the massive pyramids, waiting for the insects' representative to make an appearance. The day was as hot as a blast furnace and twice as dry. The air shimmered, and the sun was too bright to look at, even with the heavy-duty protection over their eyes. Silence turned up the cooling elements in his uniform another notch and screwed his eyes up against the harsh, unrelenting light. Sweat was pouring out of him, only to evaporate almost immediately in the awful heat. Silence didn't look at Frost. He just knew she still looked cool and calm and completely undisturbed. She was an Investigator, after all, and therefore by definition not prone to the fallibilities of the merely human. In the end, curiosity got the better of him, and he looked casually around just in time to see her kick out lazily at one of the many small forms scuttling around their feet. It flopped over onto its back, its long legs wriggling, and then somehow turned itself over again and hurried on about its business. Frost sniffed.

"Ugly things. Desolate bloody place. If the representative doesn't turn up soon, I'm going to start using these nasty little creepy-crawlies for target practice."

"That should get their attention," said Silence, smiling in spite of himself. "Do I detect a note of distaste in your voice. Investigator? I thought you were trained to take all forms of alien life in stride?"

"There's a limit to everything," said Frost, "and I think I may have found mine. Repulsive little things. If one even looks like it might be thinking of darting up my leg, I'm going to blast it and everything like it for a dozen yards around. I had more than enough of that inside the alien ship over Golgotha."

Silence looked at her carefully. If it had been anyone else, he would have sworn there was a note of remembered horror in her voice. The interior of the alien ship had been horrible enough, certainly. He still had nightmares. But Investigators were trained from childhood to give nightmares, not suffer from them. He considered his words carefully, and when he finally spoke he looked off in a different direction.

"It was bad inside the alien ship. All those insects, all sizes, all around us and no way out. Enough to give anyone the creeps."

"You're about as subtle as a flying half brick, you know that?" said Frost. "But thanks for the thought."

Silence looked back at her. She was smiling, but it didn't touch her eyes. He shrugged. "If you ever need someone to talk to…"

"I'll bear it in mind. But any problems I might have are mine, and I'll handle them."

"That's what I thought when the booze was drowning me inch by inch. You helped me out anyway."

"You didn't know how to ask for help," said Frost. "Neither do you," said Silence.

They looked at each other. There was a closeness between them that was more than just the link they always shared now. Frost's eyes softened slightly, and Silence thought for a moment that she was closer to opening up to him than she had ever been before. But the moment passed and the softness disappeared, and Frost was an Investigator again, cold and focused and quite impenetrable. Silence looked away.

"You have to make allowances for the insect representatives," he said finally. "According to the files, they have little concept of time as we understand it, but they respond well to firm behavior."

"I don't have to make allowances for anything," said Frost. "That's what being an Investigator is all about."

Silence had to smile. "Useful though the files are, however, they don't have anything at all to say about how you get the bloody insects' attention in the first place."

"We could kill a few," said Frost. "Hell, we could kill a lot. Nobody'd miss them."

"Let's save that for a last resort," said Silence. "There must be something a little less drastic we could try."

And then he broke off as a wave of insects came surging toward him, thick and black like a living carpet. His hand dropped to the disrupter at his side. Frost already had hers out, and was sweeping it back and forth, searching for a meaningful target. The wave crashed to a sudden halt a few feet short of them and began piling up into a tall, thick pillar of squirming bodies. The twitching legs folded around each other and were still, the small bodies fitting neatly together like the interlocking parts of some more complicated machine, and gradually the pillar took on a humanoid form: a dark, shiny shape that mocked humanity as much as it duplicated it. The square, flat-sided head turned jerkily on its thick neck to look at Silence and Frost, though there was no trace of anything that might have been eyes. It buzzed briefly: a short, ugly, and completely inhuman sound. It buzzed again, and suddenly, though the sounds hadn't changed, Silence and Frost somehow understood it.

"Empire," said the dark human shape, though there was nothing that might have been a mouth. "Interrogation. Respond."

Frost put her gun away and tried to look as though she'd never drawn it in the first place. "Yes, we represent the Empire," she said flatly. "You've been informed why we're here?"

There was an Empire Base on Shanna IV, populated by a handful of scientists and a small force of guards who'd all managed to upset someone really badly to get themselves posted here, but they had as little contact with the resident aliens as they could get away with. They might have arranged this meeting, or they might not have. It was that kind of Base.

Silence stared at the humanoid figure, and it stared right back at him. Though there was no trace of eyes on the flat shiny face, Silence had no doubt the insect representative was watching him. He could feel the weight of its stare, like an icy breeze in the boiling heat of the day. The insects that made up the human shape twitched suddenly, hundreds of legs flexing briefly so that a shimmer seemed to run through the figure, and then it was still again. Silence winced as a headache blossomed slowly between his eyes. It was as though he could almost see or hear something that was being hidden from him. He concentrated on the feeling and realized it felt something like the link that he shared with Frost. He glanced at her to see if she felt it, too. She was scowling, but there was nothing unusual in that. Certainly she didn't seem as disturbed as he felt. He tried to grasp the vague feeling and bring it into focus, but it slipped away like water between his fingers and was gone. He still had the headache, though.

"Rebels," the alien representative said suddenly. "Avoid. Punishment."

"Got it in a nutshell," said Frost. "Anyone tries to contact you, rebel or alien, you tell them to go to hell and then report them to the Base immediately. Understand?"

"Rebels. Avoid. Punishment. Chemicals. Interrogation. Respond."

Silence would have shivered, had he not been boiling alive in his own sweat. There was something about the way each word seemed to emanate from different parts of the dark human shape that upset him greatly. He made himself concentrate on his job.

"Yes, we've got your chemicals," he said curtly. "They're being unloaded in the usual place. The regular supply ship will be along to pick up the compounds you've produced." A question occurred to him, and he decided to ask it before he could think better of it. "We have a use for those compounds, but what do you get out of the deal?"

There was a long pause, until Silence assumed the construct wasn't going to answer him; then it said two words and fell apart before Silence could respond. The human shape disintegrated from the top down, tumbling into hundreds of its respective parts, which hit the ground running and scuttled off in different directions. In a few moments they were indistinguishable from those who were already covering the ground, and Silence wasn't at all sorry to see the back of them. Particularly, after the two words the figure had spoken. Chemicals. Addictive. He looked at Frost, who was still staring thoughtfully at the insects scuttling around her on their inscrutable, incomprehensible missions.

"Do you suppose they have any concept at all of themselves as individuals?" he said finally. "Or only when they gather together like that?"

"No one knows for sure," said Frost. "They're supposed to have a single hive mind for the whole species, but no one's been able to prove anything, one way or the other. Our instruments can't detect anything, and espers just get really bad headaches when they try to listen in. The constructs are our only way of communicating with them, and they tell us as little as they can get away with."

"What about the scientists at the Base?"

"They spend most of their time trying to get themselves transferred somewhere else, and I don't blame them one bit. This place gives me the creeps."

Silence kept his features under control, but it was a near thing. He couldn't have been more surprised if the Investigator had admitted to secret pacifist leanings. For Frost to admit that the place made her feel uncomfortable, it must really be getting to her. And that wasn't like Frost at all. He decided to do them both a favor and change the subject.

"Did you know the chemicals we supply these insects with are addictive?"

"No," said Frost, "but it makes sense. If the insects are a single hive mind, they're scattered far too widely for us to be able to hurt or control them. But withholding chemicals to which they've developed a dependency should do the trick nicely. A junkie will do anything for his next fix."

"Very efficient," said Silence. "But then, the Empire's always been a great believer in efficiency. And if it can work a little cruelty into the deal, too, so much the better." He looked around him at the thousands of small scuttling forms, working blindly and obediently in the blistering heat to meet the Empire's needs. If he saw any connection between them and him, he kept it to himself.

Chroma XIII was a singular planet, in more ways than one. The original survey ship almost missed it completely, as technically it should have been impossible for any form of life to survive in a planet so far from its burned-out, dying sun. But something about Chroma XIII caught the Captain's eye, and he sent down drones to gather information. And what they sent back was enough to make even a seasoned survey officer's jaw drop. Within the giant gas ball that was Chroma XIII, there was life without form or substance. Intelligence separated from physical existence. A planet of inherent contradictions, whose very existence was theoretically impossible.

Silence kept the Dauntless in as high an orbit as he could get away with, and he and Frost watched the main viewscreen as the ship's drones dropped toward the impossible planet. Strange images came and went on the viewscreen as the scene switched from one drone's instruments to another, and all the time the comm channels threatened to overload on the sheer intensity of what they were relaying.

There was no planetary surface, no solid area at all, and the drones dropped endlessly through shades of color and fields of light, blindingly bright, in which strange hues shifted and stirred without any purpose or meaning that could be fathomed by human eyes. There were planes of dazzling color, separate and distinct and thousands of miles long, and whirlpools the size of moons, blending slowly from one color to another, and oceans of blue mists as dark as the color you see when you close your eyes at night. And everywhere, the colors and the shapes and the shades were shot through with sudden blasts of lightning that came and went almost too fast for the human eye to follow.

"And these flashes of lightning are the aliens?" Silence said finally.

"We think so," said Frost. "It's hard to be sure of anything here. Certainly the lightning bolts share some of the attributes we associate with life. They react to outside influences, they consume light on some wavelengths and release it in others, and they appear to communicate with each other, though our translation computers have had nervous breakdowns trying to make sense of it. They reproduce constantly, and they also disappear suddenly, for no discernible reason."

"All right," said Silence, determined not to be completely thrown. "How do we communicate with them?"

"We don't," said Frost. "We're not even sure they know we're here, which might just be for the best. Why give them ideas?"

Silence looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "And the Empire's content to just leave them be?"

"Pretty much. They don't have anything we want, let alone need."

"So what the hell are we doing here?" said Silence.

"Keeping an eye on them. We have no way of knowing what they're capable of. They're life without form, which could also be life without limits, as we understand them. Who knows what they might do if they became aware of us? If they decided to leave this planet and journey to some populated world, we could be in deep trouble. Those flashes of lightning contain billions of volts, theoretically, and we're pretty sure there are other forces at work down there, too. The bottom line is, we don't have anything that could stop them if they decided they were mad at us. What use is a weapon against something that has no physical existence?"

"Great," said Silence. "Just wonderful. Something else to worry about. So we can't talk to them, let alone threaten them, and we're not even sure they know we're here."

"Got it in one," said Frost. "All we can do is drop a hundred or so security drones to keep an eye on things, and then get the hell out of here."

" 'Join the Imperial Navy and see the universe," " said Silence heavily. "Meet strange and interesting new forms of life, and run away from them. Navigator, get us the hell out of here. My head hurts."

* * *

The last planet they visited was Epsilon IX, and that meant hard suits. The gravity was five times standard, the air was a mixture of extremely noxious gases, any one of which would have been fatal on its own, and the air density was uncannily like the pressure of water you find at the bottom of a deep ocean trench. On top of all that, the entire world was a mass of goo; thick, slimy mud that covered the planet's surface from pole to pole. In some places it was only a couple of feet deep, and that was called land. Either way, it was messy as hell. There were hills that rose up suddenly overnight and then spent the rest of the day collapsing and sliding away.

There were huge artificial constructs here and there that might have been buildings or machines—or both or neither. The native intelligent species created them when they felt like it, though they declined to explain out of what or what their purpose might be. The muck itself contained a handful of extremely rare and useful trace elements, and these were refined from the goo by specially designed automated mining machinery from the Empire. People couldn't live on Epsilon IX, even inside a fully Screened Base; human-built structures inevitably sank, and had to be constantly retrieved, which cost money.

The mining equipment worked only because the natives looked after it. No one knew much about the native species. They appeared to be the only living things on Epsilon IX, which raised some interesting and rather unpleasant questions about what they ate. They had a mysterious link to their mucky environment that allowed them to thrive and prosper, but they weren't big on explaining that, or, indeed, anything else. They kept to themselves and did really nasty and inventive things to trespassers.

Silence and Frost journeyed down to what passed for the planet's surface in a pinnace, which ended up hovering in midair while Silence and Frost dropped awkwardly out of the air lock in their hard suits. They landed knee-deep in the sludge, and slogged slowly through the thick mud, slipping and sliding and holding onto each other for support. There was something vaguely solid under their heavy boots, but it rose and fell unpredictably beneath the covering goo. The slime came in varying shades of gray, much like the sky above, which was disorienting, to say the least. Sky blended into surface almost imperceptibly, which did strange things so Silence's sense of orientation. Things like up and down, left and right, forward and backward ceased being absolutes, and became more like matters of opinion. The last time Silence had felt like this he'd been drunk for a week.

He slogged along beside Frost, the hard suit's servomechanisms whining loudly as they struggled to overcome the planet's heavy gravity. Silence took a quiet satisfaction from the obvious difficulties Frost was having in plowing through the thick mud. It was good to know that even Investigators had their limits. They waded on for some time, while their surroundings rose and fell without any obvious meaning or purpose. Frost led the way with dogged determination. Silence supposed she knew where she was going, but didn't ask, just in case she didn't. He liked to think that at least one of them knew what they were doing.

The pinnace hovered high overhead, far enough away not to intimidate any of the locals, but still close enough to come charging in for an emergency rescue if necessary. Silence was getting tired fast. Even with the hard suit's servo-mechanisms to help, the constant struggle to stay upright while pressing on was exhausting. According to his suit's instruments, the local temperature was high enough to melt some metals. He was sweating like a pig despite everything the hard suit's temperature controls could do, and the lack of a proper horizon made his head hurt. He was so taken up with his own inner world of hurts and confusions that he only just noticed in time that Frost had come to a halt. He avoided crashing into her through a heroic last-minute effort, and then had to fight to keep his feet under him. He took a few deep breaths to settle himself and then looked around. The place they'd arrived at didn't seem noticeably any different from any of the others they'd plowed through to get here. There was no sign of any of the alien constructs, just a large hill to their left, slumping over like a melting ice cream.

"Is this it?" he said finally.

"In so far as there is an it, yes," said Frost. "These are the right coordinates, anyway. You know, this place is really disgusting. It looks like someone sneezed it into being."

Silence winced. "You've always had a way with words, Investigator. Now what do we do?"

"Now we wait for someone to put in an appearance. Which, knowing this place, will undoubtedly take some time. Maybe we should have brought a bucket and spade."

And then she broke off as the mud before them bubbled up into a thick dribbling pillar, like a slow-motion fountain. Silence and Frost both trained their suits' disrupters on the pillar as it bulged and contracted here and there, finally forming into a human shape, complete in every detail, including clothes. Though the clothes were made of the same mud as the body. The figure actually looked quite snappy in formal evening wear, and for a moment Silence felt almost overdressed in his hard suit. He made himself concentrate on the figure's face. It was gray and sweated driblets of mud, but the features were indisputably human. The eyes focused on Silence and then on Frost, and the mouth twitched in a smile.

"Before you ask," the figure said briskly, "no, I don't really look like this. You are looking at a mental projection, formed from handy nearby materials. Trust me, you don't want to see what I really look like. Not unless you're into projectile vomiting, which I would assume could get really messy inside one of those suits. Human senses are too limited to appreciate my true beauty." He folded his dripping arms across his sliding chest and gave them a moment to think about that. "Now, what do you people want this time? I'm busy. And don't ask me what at; you couldn't possibly hope to understand."

"If you're this planet's idea of a diplomat, I'd hate to meet your politicians," said Silence. "How is it you speak our language so well?"

"I don't. I'm communicating directly with your mind, which is slumming for me, but we all have to make sacrifices if we're to keep the gods happy. Little joke there, to put you at your ease."

"You're telepathic?" said Frost. "That wasn't in the files."

"Nothing so primitive. We are communicating directly, though your human minds are too limited to pick up most of what I'm transmitting." The figure stopped and frowned. "Though I have to say, you seem much more receptive than most."

"Save the compliments," said Frost. "We're here on business."

"Well, I didn't think you were tourists," snapped the man made out of mud. "What does the Empire want this time?"

"Rebels and aliens; don't talk to them," said Frost briskly. "If anyone tries, contact your nearest Imperial spy satellite. Any alliances with unauthorized forces will result in severe punitive measures."

"And what might those be?" said the mud man. "Going to arrest us, perhaps? Not unless you can build prisons in five dimensions. Or perhaps you'll take away some of our lovely mud? Help yourselves; we've got tons of the bloody stuff."

Frost raised her right hand and triggered the disrupter built into her glove. The energy beam flashed out and vaporized the mud man's head. Silence started to object and then stopped himself. He didn't approve of unnecessary killing, but this was the Investigator's show. She was best qualified to decide what was necessary to get her point across. The mud man should have been more respectful, damn it. An insult to them was an insult to the Empress. And then he realized the headless body hadn't slumped to the ground. It stood just where it had, as though nothing had happened. Liquid mud bubbled in the stump of the neck, and then rose up suddenly to form itself into a new head. The same face quickly appeared, and the mud man glared at Frost.

"I see Imperial diplomacy hasn't changed much since its last visit. Plus seven points for brutality, minus several thousand for severe lack of cool. Never mind barbarians at the gate, they've already taken over. Just once, I wish they'd send us a representative slightly higher up the food chain. I've had more interesting conversations with a piece of moss. You humans should be bloody grateful my species is physically linked to the planet's ecosystem. If we could leave this world, we'd be running the Empire inside a week."

"But you can't, and you don't," said Frost. "So remember what I told you. No talking to any strange men or aliens, or we'll work out some way to give you all a good spanking. Right. That's it, we're going. Have fun playing with your mud."

"I don't see any need for sexual slanders," said the mud man. "Please feel free to leave our world anytime. Goodbye."

Silence started to turn to leave, and then stopped as he realized Frost hadn't moved. He couldn't see her face inside her helmet, but he knew she was staring thoughtfully at the figure made out of mud. He could feel it. The link between them seemed suddenly very strong, and he knew without having to be told what was running through her mind. She wanted to see the real alien; the real shape and being that lay behind the image of the mud man. The reality behind the mask.

"Cut it out, Frost," he said quietly. "We don't need to know."

"He doesn't respect us," said the Investigator. "He doesn't fear us. I want to know why."

"Listen to your partner," said the mud man. "You really don't want to do this. This image is all you're capable of understanding. The reality of what I and my kind are would destroy your limited minds." He stopped abruptly and frowned at Frost. "What are you doing? Your mind is… uncoiling. There's more to you than there was before. You're not human. What are you?"

Frost stared back at him, her brows furrowed as she concentrated, reaching inside herself for a strength and vision she hadn't realized she possessed. There was something more beyond the mud man, something bigger, vaster… The sheer size of it made her head ache, but she wouldn't look away. It was deep down in the mud, under the surface of the world, and it was rising slowly out of the depths toward her. It had length and width and breadth and other dimensions, too. And perhaps just to look on it with merely human eyes would be enough to turn her to stone, like a butterfly caught in Medusa's gaze, but she couldn't, wouldn't, look away. She had to see, had to know… Silence grabbed her by the shoulders of her hard suit, spun her around, and shook her as hard as he could.

"Don't look at it! I can see what you're seeing, and it's dangerous. We're not ready to look at something like this. Just the sight of it would burn the eyes out of our heads and blast our reason. Look away, Investigator! That's an order!"

He reached out with his mind, not quite knowing how he was doing what he was doing, and slowly forced Frost's inner eye shut. The image of what lay beyond and below the mud man was suddenly gone, and the heightened link between Silence and Frost shrank back to its normal background murmur. They were both back in their own heads again and saw only what was in front of them. Frost shuddered suddenly.

"Thank you, Captain. I got… lost for a while there."

"Let's get out of here, Frost. We've given them their instructions. Anything else is none of our business."

"We can't let them run us off. They have to know who's in charge here."

"I have an uneasy feeling they already know," said Silence. "Let's go."

Back on the bridge of the Dauntless, Silence was jerked out of his memories by the quiet but insistent voice of his Communications Officer, Eden Cross. He'd turned around at his workstation to look at Silence, who blinked at him a couple of times, and then tried to look alert and awake, as though he'd been listening to Cross all along. It only took him a moment to realize he wasn't fooling anyone, and he relaxed with a smile. He was lucky it was Cross. Cross was a good man.

"Sorry," said Silence. "I was light-years away. Run that past me again."

"There appears to be a situation belowdecks, Captain,"'said Cross. There was no trace of a smile on his dark face, but his eyes were understanding. "Not long ago, strange noises were heard coming from inside Security Officer Stelmach's private quarters. Some of his people went to investigate and discovered Stelmach systematically wrecking his quarters. They inquired diplomatically as to what the problem might be, and he threw things at them. They have currently retreated just out of range, and are awaiting further instructions. He is their boss, after all. And technically speaking, only yourself as Captain and Investigator Frost are senior enough to restrain a Security Officer."

Silence looked at Frost beside him, and she raised an eyebrow. Stelmach had a tendency to get excited in emergencies, but usually on board ship he was cool and calm, and followed every regulation to the letter. There were those who said he didn't authorize his own bowel movements without checking the regulations first. Something serious must have happened to destroy Stelmach's composure.

"We'd better go and take a look, Investigator," said Silence. "He is in charge of the ship's security, after all. If he's discovered something that upsetting, I think I want to know about it, too."

Frost nodded calmly. "We have been out on the Rim a long time. People have been known to crack, so far from light and life and civilization."

"Not Stelmach," said Silence. "It'd take more than a case of cabin fever to crack him." Silence got to his feet. "Second in Command, you have the bridge. Investigator, follow me. But keep your hands away from your weapons. I want Stelmach conscious and able to answer questions."

"Spoilsport," said Frost.

They left the bridge and took the express elevator down to the officers' quarters. They could tell when they were getting near. There were people milling in the corridors, including those from the last shift, woken by the sound of Stelmach's voice, shouting and swearing incoherently. Silence politely but firmly sent them back to their beds, assuring them he'd take care of everything. Frost hurried them on their way with an occasional glare. Finally the two of them rounded a corner to find half a dozen security men huddled together at the end of a corridor. They jumped half out of their skins when Silence addressed them from behind, and then relaxed a little from sheer relief when they saw who it was. They even looked glad to see the Investigator, which was probably a first.

There was a quick discussion among the six of them as to who was in charge, and then that one was pushed forward by the others. He started to explain what had happened, realized he hadn't saluted, tried to do that and apologize at the same time, and then started explaining all over again. The sound of something large but fragile smashing into hundreds of pieces came clearly from the open door to Stelmach's quarters, followed by more incoherent swearing. The security man swallowed hard and started again.

"Lieutenant Zhang reporting, sir. Security Officer Stelmach appears to be… unwell. We have attempted to ascertain what the problem might be, but he has declined to talk to us, and besides, he has a gun. Perhaps you would care to have a word with him, Captain. I'm sure he'd listen to you, and the Investigator."

"At ease, Lieutenant," said Silence. "We'll handle things from here. You and your people fall back out of sight around the corner. It might be your presence that's upsetting him so much. See that this corridor is blocked off at both ends; I don't want anyone else coming in here while we're talking to Stelmach. And, Lieutenant, we are not to be interrupted for anything less than a major emergency."

Zhang nodded quickly, gathered up the rest of his people with his eyes, and led them in a hurried but dignified retreat back around the corner. In his quarters, Stelmach was still shouting and breaking things. Silence admired the man's stamina. He'd had a few blind rages himself in his drinking days, and he knew from experience that rages were hard work to keep going. He turned to Frost, and then frowned at her.

"I said no guns, Investigator."

"He has one, Captain."

"But he hasn't used it yet. Let's not put any ideas into his head." He glared at Frost until she holstered her gun again, and then looked back down the corridor. Things had grown ominously quiet. "Is Stelmach a drinker, do you know? I haven't heard anything, but someone in his position would be under a lot of strain, and in a good position to get his hands on all kinds of booze, legal or otherwise."

"Or worse," said Frost. "He'd also have access to all kinds of drugs for use in his interrogations. Plus whatever illicit drugs his people might have discovered and confiscated. There's always something going around. There's nothing in his files about substance abuse of any kind, but he had access to the files. I can't say I know the man well. Not many do. Security Officer isn't a post to make you popular with people."

"But do they respect him?"

"Oh, I should think so. The fact that no one's rolled a fragmentation grenade into his room while he was sleeping is a pretty good sign the crew respects his authority. And that his people are on their toes."

Silence and Frost moved slowly and quietly down the empty corridor, stopping just short of the open door to Stelmach's quarters. Silence gestured to the Investigator, and they both placed their backs against the bulkhead wall next to the door. Technically speaking, all Silence had to do was show himself and order Stelmach to calm down and explain himself. The Security Officer would do this immediately or face a court-martial for insubordination. In practice, Silence had a strong feeling he might end up doing more ducking than talking. Assuming Stelmach really did have a gun. According to regulations, the use of energy weapons on board ship was strictly forbidden, except under the direst circumstances. On the other hand, Stelmach was the Dauntless's Security Officer, and if he wanted a gun there weren't many people on the ship with the authority to say no. Silence always carried a gun, as did the Investigator. They were required to do so, partly in case of situations like this. But in all his time as Captain, Silence had never drawn a gun on a member of his own crew, and he wasn't about to start now. And to hell with what the regulations said. It was still quiet in Stelmach's quarters. Silence raised his voice, keeping it calm and even and very assured.

"Stelmach, this is the Captain. I have the Investigator with me. We need to talk to you."

There was no reply. Silence strained his ears against the quiet and thought he could hear harsh, heavy breathing from inside the cabin. Maybe Stelmach had passed out, from drink or drugs or exhaustion. And just maybe he was waiting for some poor trusting fool to stick his head around the door, so he could shoot it off. Silence licked his dry lips and tried again.

"Stelmach, this is the Captain. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, Captain. I can hear you." The Security Officer's voice was a quiet rasp, a low painful sound, as though he'd injured his voice with shouting and screaming. "Go away, Silence. I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to anyone."

"We rather gathered that," said Silence. "But we're going to have to talk sooner or later; you know that. Now, are you going to invite me in for a little chat, or am I going to have to send the Investigator in to reason with you? My way will mean less damage to the fixtures and fittings. Look, whatever the problem is, I can't help you standing around out here. And you do need help, don't you?"

There was a long pause, and when Stelmach finally spoke again, his voice was tired and defeated, as though all the rage had just drained right out of him. "All right. Come in. Let's get this over with."

That particular choice of words had an ominous ring to it, but Silence decided he was going in anyway. There wasn't really anything else he could do. He turned to Frost and kept his voice low. "I'm going in first. You back me up. Keep your hands away from your weapons. We don't want to spook him."

"I should go in first," said Frost. "I'm more expendable than you."

"No offense, Investigator, but you do tend to make a rather… strong first impression. The state he's in, he might just take one look at you and open fire. Besides, I'm more of an authority figure as far as he's concerned. He's always responded well to authority figures in the past. And before you ask, no I'm not going to use a force shield, and neither are you. He might think we didn't trust him."

"Oh, we wouldn't want him to think that," said Frost. "Perish the thought. But if he makes one wrong move, I'm going to spatter him all over the bulkheads."

"Let's try and be calm about this, Investigator. I don't want him killed. He's a pain in the ass, but he's good at his job. Good Security Officers are hard to come by. He's also one of the few people with firsthand experience on how to control the Grendel aliens. I'll decide when and if violence is necessary. Now, put on a nice smile. We don't want to frighten him." Frost bared her teeth, and Silence winced. She looked as though she was about to bite him somewhere painful. "All right, forget the smile. It doesn't suit you. Leave all the talking to me and don't get touchy about anything he says. I want to know what's reduced Stelmach to a state like this."

Frost shrugged, but kept her hands ostentatiously away from her weapons. Silence decided to settle for that. He stepped forward into the corridor and walked through the open door to Stelmach's quarters. Frost stuck so close behind him he could feel her breath on the back of his neck. Silence smiled and nodded to Stelmach, who was sitting on the side of his bed, his head hanging down, his shoulders slumped in tiredness or defeat or both. His gun was lying on the floor, well out of his reach. Silence relaxed just a little and looked around.

The place was a mess. Everything that wasn't nailed down or an intrinsic part of the ship had been picked up and thrown at something else. The single table and chair had been overturned, and the shattered fragments of his more fragile personal belongings covered the floor, along with pretty much everything else. The bed folded down from the cabin wall, and had survived intact, but the bedclothes had been torn apart and strewn all over the small cabin. Stelmach was sitting on the bare bed, looking anything but dangerous, but Silence decided he was going to take it slowly anyway. He could sense Frost behind him, like an attack dog straining against a short leash. He stepped forward, and Stelmach finally looked up. His face was tired and drawn, and he looked ten years older.

"Come in, Captain, Investigator. Excuse the mess. It's the maid's day off."

"I've seen worse," said Silence. "You've been very… busy, Stelmach. Any particular reason?"

"What does it matter?" said Stelmach. "I know the regulations. I belong in the brig. Go ahead and take me. I'm finished."

"I don't believe in sentencing someone until they've had a fair hearing," said Silence carefully. "Explain yourself. What brought this on?"

"It's private, Captain. Family business. I don't want to talk about it."

"Talk anyway. If I'm going to lose the best Security Officer I've ever had, I want to know why."

Stelmach looked past Silence's shoulder at Frost. "Does she have to be here?"

"She's concerned for my safety," said Silence. "But she can step out into the corridor if you'd like."

"No," said Stelmach. "I don't suppose it matters." He leaned back against the bulkhead his bed folded down from, and his voice was very tired. "I got a letter this morning. From my family. We've always been very close, ever since our father died when I was very young. There was a demonstration, some kind of political thing, and it turned ugly. Someone threw something, someone else opened fire, and my father the police officer was dead before he hit the ground. Mother brought us up, kept us together, did whatever was necessary to keep a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, food in our bellies. I was the youngest. Never wore new clothes in my life till I joined the Service. We were raised to revere my father as a saint and to have nothing at all to do with politics. She had all of us sign up for the Services, the moment we were old enough. There's always job security in the Services, whatever might be happening anywhere else.

"My sister Athena was the eldest. They took her away to become an Investigator when she was ten. We lost touch with her after that. My brothers Bold and Hero did well for themselves. Bold's a Major in the army, Hero's a Group leader in the Jesuit commandos. They write home regularly, send money when they can. I'm the only failure. My career's over. After the debacle on the Wolfling World I was lucky not to be executed, but I'll never be more than a Security Officer now, not even if I was officially exonerated. Even my work on controlling the Grendel aliens has been taken over by other people. As far as my family is concerned, I've disgraced them by being such a failure. My mother wrote to me, telling me not to come home again. She's expelled me from the family, disinherited me, and removed all references to me from the family history. She now tells everyone she only ever had two sons.

"I always did my best. Followed the regulations, did as I was told, tried hard to be a good soldier. Lived my live for the Empire. And what did it get me? A Security Officer's post on a ship passing time out on the Rim, going nowhere, doing nothing, or nothing that really matters. Do what you want to me. I don't care."

He looked up suddenly, glaring at Silence and Frost. There were bright spots of color on his pale cheeks, and his eyes were puffy from crying but still sharp. "I hate this ship. I hate you, too. Both of you. If I'd kept you under control like I was supposed to, things might have been different. But I let you reason with me, and the Investigator intimidate me, and it all went wrong. I hate my life, or what's left of it. And most of all I hate myself for being so weak. My mother said my father would spit on me if he could see what I've become, and I think she's right. He would have shown more courage, more… something. Sometimes he comes to me in my cabin, sits on the end of my bed in the early hours of the morning, and tells me he's ashamed of me. He looks young and sharp, just like in the holos taken before he was killed. I'm older now than he was then, but I'll always be a child to him. I can't stand these quarters anymore. I'm afraid to sleep. Put me in the brig. Or have the Investigator shoot me and put me out of my family's misery. She'd like that. I don't care. I don't care about anything anymore."

He finally wound down, his head lowering bit by bit till he was staring at the floor again. He wasn't crying. He was too tired for that. Silence didn't know what to say. He'd read up on Stelmach's background, to try and find out why anyone would name their child Valiant, but the bare facts hadn't really made any sense till now. He felt ashamed and embarrassed at being so bluntly confronted with someone else's private pain and shame. These were the kinds of things you normally only told to your friends or loved ones, but as a Security Officer, Stelmach had no friends—and now he had no family either. That was why he'd wrecked his cabin. It was his way of letting the anger out, as well as a reason to be punished.

Silence didn't know what to do. He couldn't just have the man arrested and thrown in the brig, even if that was technically the correct thing to do. He wasn't Stelmach's friend, didn't even like the man, but he was a part of the Dauntless's crew, and as his Captain, it was Silence's duty to look after him. He was responsible for the man's well-being, like a father for an errant son. The thought struck a strong chord in him.

"Valiant, listen to me. We're your family now. This ship, this crew. You belong to us. If anyone's going to decide you're a failure, it'll be me, and I haven't made my mind up yet. You've survived when a lot of others didn't. And you were the first man ever to yoke a Grendel. They can't take that away from you. You're not a failure till I say you are. I'm your family and I'm your father, and the first thing I have to say to you is… clean up your room, boy."

Stelmach looked at him, startled, and then burst into laughter. It was loud, healthy laughter, dispersing the gloom and doom that had filled the cabin, and Silence began to relax. He smiled at Frost, and though she didn't smile back, she seemed perhaps a little less cold and forbidding than she usually did. Stelmach's laughter began to die away, but before he could say anything, Silence's comm unit chimed in his ear. He gestured for Stelmach to wait a moment and opened a channel.

"This is Silence. It had better be important."

"I'm afraid it is. Captain," said the voice of his Second in Command. "I think you'd better get back to the bridge. We have a situation up here."

"What kind of situation?"

"Damned if I know, Captain. But I'll be a lot happier when you're back on the bridge. There's something… out there."

The comm channel closed abruptly, leaving only the faintest hiss of static in Silence's ear. He broke off the connection and scowled, uneasy for no reason he could define. There had been something in his Second's voice… the man had almost sounded scared. Silence's first thought was an alien ship, but if that had been the case the Second would have said so. Hell, he'd have sounded a Red Alert by now. Silence's frown deepened as he looked at Frost and Stelmach, who were studying him expectantly.

"Forget this mess," he said flatly. "We're needed on the bridge. Move it."

"Of course, Captain," said Stelmach, and led the way out of his cabin. They headed down the corridor together, three professional officers from the same great family, whose needs always came first.

Back on the bridge. Silence nodded quickly to his Second in Command and sank into his command chair again. Frost and Stelmach took up positions on either side of him, at hand if he needed them. The atmosphere on the bridge was so tense you could have sharpened a knife on it. Everyone was at their station, engrossed in their instruments, but they were too alert, too focused, almost as though they were afraid to look away. The main viewscreen showed the Dauntless's route had brought them right to the edge of the Rim. At a certain point, the stars and the light they cast just stopped abruptly, as though it had run into a wall, and beyond that there was only the utter blackness of the Darkvoid, where no light shone. It was hard to look at, for any length of time, but your eyes kept creeping back to it. Silence glared at his Second in Command.

"Everything seems to be in order, Second. Nothing on the viewscreen, all instruments functioning. So what's the problem?"

The Second in Command shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "It was the Communications Officer, sir, who first brought it to my attention."

Silence turned to look at Cross, his frown deepening. "Well?"

"It's… difficult to put into words, Captain." Cross turned away from his station so he could look at Silence directly. "I've been… hearing things. Voices in the void, calling out to me. There are people talking out there in empty space, where there can't be any people. I've checked the sensors. There's no one here but us. But… it isn't just me."

He stopped and looked unhappily at Silence to see how he was taking it. Silence kept his voice carefully neutral. From the difficulty Cross was having in getting his words out, it was clear he took it very seriously. His dark face was drawn and tired, and there were beads of sweat on his high forehead. Without looking around, Silence could sense that other people on the bridge were waiting for his reaction. A while back, he would have thought they were just setting him up, seeing what they could get away with, but he didn't think so now. He could feel how seriously they were all taking it, and though they were trying to hide it, everyone on the bridge was scared. Silence felt a faint prickling on the back of his neck. These were battle-hardened veterans, and they didn't scare easily. He crossed his legs casually, but he could feel a growing tension in his gut. Strange things happened out on the Rim. Everyone knew that. He nodded curtly for Cross to continue.

"It's not just me, Captain. People have been hearing things for days. On all the comm channels, from the main hailing frequencies to private cabin-to-cabin channels. There are voices where there shouldn't be; whispering, muttering, just clear enough to spook people with what they can make out. There's nothing wrong with the comm equipment. I've checked it every way I can, and it all checks out one hundred per cent. Then I thought someone was playing tricks, but if they are I can't catch them at it, and I know all the tricks in the book. So I checked with other people, and that's when I found out this has been going on for days, ever since we started approaching the edge of the Rim.

"And it's not just voices. It's like we're being watched, all the time, and I don't mean the security cameras. We're used to them. It's more like… there's someone else in the room with you, even when there isn't. It's like someone's standing over your bed when you're sleeping, watching and waiting. There's a constant feeling that something's wrong, something we should be doing, something important and vital…"

"Night terrors aren't exactly unknown, out here on the Rim," Silence said carefully. "The Darkvoid's still pretty much a mystery. We don't know how much close proximity to it affects the mind, and one way or another we've all spent a lot of time exposed to it recently."

"That's what I thought, at first," said Cross. "It's what we all thought. This phenomenon's been reported before by other ships out on the Rim who've stayed out here too long. Seeing things, hearing things, feeling things. It's usually written off as cabin fever. The doc hands out industrial strength tranquilizers, and that keeps people quiet until they've left the Rim. But I've been running some more detailed checks. When I reran the bridge tapes, according to my instruments at the times I was hearing the voices, there were no signals coming in. No signals at all."

Silence raised an eyebrow at that. "Some form of esp communication?"

"Not according to the ship's esper, Captain. If there were any psionic forces on board apart from himself, or even in the vicinity, he'd know. And there's more. It's… difficult to record these voices. They don't always come through clearly enough to make an impression. But during the time you were gone from the bridge, I picked up a whole group of voices, and managed to record them. Listen."

He turned back to his console and tapped in a command. A loud hissing filled the air, as static seeped from the main address speakers. Silence frowned, straining his ears against the white noise of the static. He could see everyone else on the bridge was listening, too, their faces taut with suspense and barely hidden fear. Silence's gut tightened again. What could be so scary about a few voices? And then a voice rose out of the static, cold and dead, but very determined to be heard.

"It's dark, here. Here, the birds burn."

There was a pause, and then more voices came, one after the other, different voices, slow and halting but all driven by some desperate need to be heard.

"Help me. Help me. There's something holding my hand, and it won't let go."

"It's coming. It's coming your way, and you can't stop it."

"Something's watching you from behind your mirrors."

"Listen to me! Listen to me! There are dead hands beating on your walls!"

"They're coming. They're coming out of the dark in a dead ship."

The last voice broke off abruptly, and then there was only the hissing of static on the speakers. Cross turned them off, and looked back at Silence.

"Whatever this is, it's getting worse. These are the clearest recordings so far. I tried computer enhancements on the earlier recordings, but it didn't help. Almost as though the computer couldn't hear them. I hadn't realized how widespread the problem was till I started asking around. I don't think anyone did. They all thought it was just them, going crazy."

"Is what we just heard typical of what the voices are saying?" said Silence.

"Pretty much. They all make a kind of sense, but what they mean is anyone's guess."

"What do you think they are?" said Silence.

Cross's features tightened, but his gaze was level, and when he spoke his voice was carefully flat and calm. "I think they're voices of the dead, Captain. Desperately trying to reach us, to warn us about… something. Some members of the crew I talked to claim to have recognized particular, familiar voices. All of them people they knew to be dead. Friends and relatives, precious ones long gone. I heard my grandfather. He was part of the crew on the starship Champion when it disappeared out on the Rim over a hundred years ago. Now we're here, in the same sector, and it's starting again. Voices of the dead, desperately trying to communicate, to make us understand before it's too late. And before you say anything, Captain, yes I do know how this must sound. But we've all heard these voices. Haven't you heard anything, Captain, felt anything strange in the long hours of the night?"

"No," said Silence. "I can't say I have." He looked at Frost, and she shook her head sharply. He looked to his other side. "Stelmach?"

"I'm not sure," Stelmach said slowly. "I saw my father, but I thought that was just dreams. And once, when I woke up in the early hours of the morning, I thought I felt my sister's presence. Standing over me, protecting me from… something."

"All right," said Silence. "Let's not get carried away here. I have no doubt this phenomenon is real, but whatever it is you're hearing, it's not the dearly departed dropping in for a chat. Much more likely it's some form of psionic communication we haven't encountered before, that your minds are interpreting as voices and feelings. There was a report filed a few years back, which most of you are supposed to have read, about the possibility of new forms of life appearing in the Darkvoid. The report's author believed there could be creatures living in the endless dark, in the gulfs between the frozen planets. A new kind of life, made possible by the unnatural conditions in the Darkvoid. And if that doesn't grab you, try this. How about some subtle form of alien attack? We're expecting the new alien ships to come through the Darkvoid to reach us. This could all be nothing more than some new kind of psionic weapon, designed to scare and confuse us. And doing a pretty good job, from the look of you."

Silence looked around the bridge and could see the new ideas taking root. People were starting to look at each other, smiling and relaxing as they considered the new ideas and found they liked them. They began to murmur among themselves and sit back in their chairs, the fear and uncertainty visibly dropping away from them. Even Cross was nodding, agreeing. Silence let them talk and laugh for a few minutes before restoring bridge discipline.

"Activate the long-range sensors, Cross," he said finally. "If there is an alien ship out there somewhere, hiding in the Darkvoid, I want to know about it."

Cross nodded quickly and bent over his station, powering up the long-range sensors. He hadn't been using them automatically because of the vast amounts of power they burned up, but theoretically they could detect a grain of sand half a light-year away, and tell you what it had for breakfast. Silence sat back in his command chair and let Cross get on with it. The odds were he wouldn't find anything, but just operating the long-range sensors for a while should help the crew feel better and more secure.

"I'm almost disappointed," Frost said quietly. "So much fuss over a few night terrors. They'll be wanting someone to hold their hands when they cross the road next."

"We don't all have your icy nerves, Investigator," said Silence. "And dealing with the crew's problems—real or perceived—is part of my job. Still, it's interesting that you and I never heard these voices."

"Our minds are a lot more… disciplined than they used to be," said Frost. "Perhaps we've become harder to fool."

"Perhaps. Either way, I'll let Cross run the sensors for a few more minutes, and then…"

"Unidentified ship, Captain!" said Cross suddenly. "Only just in range, but it's coming straight at us at one hell of a speed."

"Yellow Alert," said Silence. "Look sharp, people. Cross, put it up on the viewscreen."

"It's still in the Darkvoid, sir," said Cross. "We won't see it for a while yet."

"Could it be an alien ship?" asked Frost.

"Unknown, Investigator," said Cross. "But at the speed it's moving, it'll be here soon."

Silence studied the darkness on the viewscreen, carefully keeping his face calm and unmoved. His crew chattered around him on the bridge, powering up the ship's weapons and shields. People were reporting in from all over the ship as they took up attack positions. Silence smiled slightly. The doom and the gloom on the bridge had completely vanished. The unknown ship might be a threat, but it was a threat the crew understood.

"The ship's slowing, Captain," said Cross. "I think it knows we're here. It's almost at the edge of the Darkvoid. We should have it on the screen any moment…"

He broke off as the ship appeared on the viewscreen, came to a full stop just beyond the Rim. It was a simple metal sphere, bristling with instruments, mute and menacing. It was also very familiar, and quite definitely human.

"Getting details now, Captain," said Cross. "It's an Empire starcruiser… class C." He looked back at Silence, surprised, before checking his instruments again. "There hasn't been a class C ship in Service since the beginning of the century. Its shields are down, but it's making no attempt to contact us. I'm using the standard hailing frequencies, but there's no response. It looks to be in good condition; no obvious signs of damage."

"Could it be a pirate ship?" said Stelmach.

"Doubtful," said Frost. "They wouldn't be caught dead in a ship as slow as that. A pirate's career depends on being able to outrun his pursuers. But if that is an Empire ship, what the hell is an old crock like that doing out here on the Rim?"

"Maybe it's a ghost ship," said Silence, and regretted the word ghost the moment he said it. He didn't need to look around to feel the tension rising on the bridge again. "Cross, there should be an identification number on the ship's hull. Find it and check it against records. See if you can put a name to it."

"Already have, sir." The Communication Officer's voice was high and thin. "It's the Champion. My grandfather's ship. Reported lost with all hands, one hundred and seven years ago."

"That's impossible," said Silence numbly. "I remember the story. Whatever happened to the Champion is one of the fleet's great unsolved mysteries. But its last reported position was halfway across the Empire from here. How did it end up in the Darkvoid?"

"A good question, Captain," said Frost. "Another might be: who's running the ship now? It was moving under its own power through the Darkvoid, but someone brought it to a halt here, facing us. And, since they must know we know there's someone on board, why aren't they talking to us?"

"It has to be a trap of some kind," said Stelmach. "Could it be an alien ship, disguised?"

"It's not a holo image," said Cross. "Exterior is exactly what it should be."

"Alien or not," said Silence, "I'd say the odds are extremely good that this ship is the source of the unsettling phenomena you've all been experiencing. The ship's appearance could be a part of that. Psychological warfare. Cross, take us to Red Alert. All shields up. If this is a disguised alien ship, it's not going to get the chance to hit us like its brother did over Golgotha. Bring all guns to bear, but nobody fires without my express command."

There was a hum of new activity as the bridge crew busied themselves. They all remembered how close that other alien ship had come to cleaning their clock permanently. They were looking forward to a little payback. Frost leaned in close beside Silence.

"I have to say, Captain, that the odds of this being an alien ship are really rather small. All the sensor readings seem to be insisting that the ship facing us is indeed the long-lost Champion."

"I don't want a panic on my bridge," Silence said quietly. "Personally, I think both chances are equally unlikely. More probably, this is a trap of some kind. Maybe even a first shot from the new rebellion. Either way, I want my people primed and ready to blow the snot out of that ship at the first wrong move. Communications Officer, what readings are you getting now?"

"Mostly confusing ones, sir," said Cross, scowling down at his panels. "Most of the new ship's systems are down. No defensive shields, no activated weapons… and no life support. No atmosphere and colder than hell. It's just hanging there, dead in the water. I don't even know how it got there. All my instruments seem quite convinced the ship's drive is cold. There's nothing to show it's been used in one hell of a long time."

"Life-form readings?" said Silence.

"Not a thing, Captain. Human or otherwise. There's always the chance it could be an old plague ship."

Silence glared at him. "Ghost ship, plague ship; you're a real cheerful sort to have around, Cross, you know that? We're going to have to take a closer look. Maintain Red Alert, but keep the long-range sensors open. If there's one ship out here, there might be more, and I don't want us getting hit while we're distracted. Investigator, put together an away team. You and I are taking a pinnace over to that ship to see what's what."

"I suppose I'm wasting my breath in pointing out that as Captain you shouldn't risk your life with an investigating team?" said Frost.

"You are indeed," said Silence. "Whatever that ship is, I need firsthand information before I can make any decisions. Stelmach, would you care to accompany us?"

"Not really, no," said Stelmach. "They don't pay me enough to volunteer for missions like this. In fact, they couldn't pay me enough. Have a nice trip, Captain. I'll be right here when you get back."

"Captain," said Cross. "Permission to join your team. If that really is the Champion, my grandfather's ship…"

"We won't need a Communications Officer," said Frost.

"But we might need someone who could tell a fake Champion from the real thing," said Silence. "All right, Cross. You're on the team. Second, you have the bridge again. Let's go, people."

They crossed over to what might be the Champion in a pinnace; Silence, Frost, Cross, and six security men. They all wore hard suits. The Dauntless's sensors had been quite specific that there wasn't a single life-support system working in the whole ship. Silence patched into the pinnace's sensors through his comm implant and studied the Champion thoughtfully as the pinnace drifted closer. It was as though the bulkhead turned transparent where he was looking, giving him a clear view of the mystery ship. It looked heavy and clumsy, compared to the sleek starcruisers he was used to. The old C class had been something of a compromise between speed and weaponry, that in the end turned out to favor neither. Which was why it had been quickly bested and replaced by the D class. Even so, the Champion was something of a legend in the fleet. She'd been one of the Empire's foremost exploratory vessels, checking out new worlds for alien contacts or colonization, and brought fourteen new planets into the Empire during her short life in the Service. Before she went out to the Rim once too often and was never seen again by human eyes.

Until now. Silence couldn't help wondering if it was just coincidence that had brought the Champion back at such a volatile time for the Empire. Like a message from the past, when things were different. Silence put the thought aside. He had sworn to serve the Iron Throne, no matter who sat on it, because the Empire must be preserved. All the other choices were worse. Better a corrupt civilization than an Empire shattered and reduced to barbarism. He pushed that thought aside, too, and concentrated on the starship looming up before him, hanging like a great white whale in a dark sea. It grew slowly larger, filling the space between them, so that he could no longer see the Rim or the Darkvoid beyond it. And finally the pinnace drifted to a halt, only a few feet between its hull and the Champion's.

"Try the hailing frequencies one more time," Silence said quietly, not taking his eyes off the vast white metal wall before him.

"Still no response, Captain," said Cross after a long moment. "Pinnace sensors confirm no life forms anywhere on the ship."

"See if you can open the Champion's air lock with a general override signal," said Silence.

Cross bent over his panels and then shook his head. "No response. All the systems must be down. We're going to have to crack it open manually."

"No surprises there." Silence closed down his comm link to the sensors, and the pinnace's bulkhead reappeared before him. He looked around at his team one at a time, making eye contact so they could see how calm and assured he was. "All right, people, pay attention. We're going out through the pinnace's air lock in our hard suits. Investigator Frost leading. We're right up against the Champion's air lock, so all we have to do is step outside and open it. Cross will operate the manual override on the outside of the air-lock door, and then the Investigator will enter the lock itself. She will go through alone, to check out the situation. Once she gives the all clear, I want you cycling through that air lock as fast as you can go. There's no telling what shape the mechanism's in after all this time, and I don't want anyone left outside."

"What if something happens to the Investigator?" said Cross.

"Then you back off, and the Dauntless blows the Champion to shit," said Frost. "Because if I can't handle it, you sure as hell can't."

"Once we're inside," said Silence, pressing calmly on as though the interchange hadn't happened, "we will make our way to the bridge and activate what systems we can. Everyone stay together, but don't bunch up. And keep your eyes open. The Champion is to be considered hostile territory until proven otherwise. You are authorized to use lethal force on anything that moves, with the exception of your teammates. So don't get jumpy. Investigator, lead the way."

Frost nodded and moved over to the inner door of the pinnace's air lock. There was a pause as everyone put on their helmets and made sure the seals were secure, and then Frost opened the inner door and stepped inside, followed by Silence and Cross. The three hard suits filled the air lock from wall to wall. They waited patiently as the air was flushed out, and then Frost opened the outer door. It opened slowly, silently, revealing the Champion's outer hull, only a few feet away. Silence gestured to Frost, and she stepped forward onto the outer edge of the door. She reached out a gloved hand to the small wheel clearly marked on the outside of the Champion's air lock and took a firm hold. Silence moved in beside her to brace her once she started exerting pressure. The pinnace's artificially produced gravity didn't extend beyond the air lock. Her armored glove closed around the wheel and turned it inch by inch. The outer doors of the air lock slowly parted, and a bright light suddenly appeared within the lock. Silence relaxed a little. At least some of the Champion's systems were still working. The doors crept farther apart, until finally Frost was able to step carefully from the Dauntless into the Champion. The doors closed over her again, and Silence could only wait. He could feel her presence through the link they shared, and her calm composure helped to settle him.

"The air lock is functioning perfectly," her voice said suddenly through his comm implant. "I have light and gravity, but no air. The pumps are working, but it would appear they have no air to work with. The inner doors are opening. Lights have come on beyond them. I'm now in the corridor outside the lock. No movement anywhere. Still no air, and the temperature's way below zero. You might as well come on over. There's no sign of any welcoming party."

"Stay where you are," said Silence. "We'll be right with you."

He worked the lock's outer doors again, and he and Cross passed through into the Champion, followed quickly by the security men. The corridor beyond the lock was brightly lit but uncomfortably narrow, and the low ceiling seemed to press down above their helmets. The walls were covered with cables and conduits and tightly packed instrumentation. The Empire's designers had been cramming in every extra improvement they could think of, right up to the last minute. None of it looked particularly dated. The Dauntless might be more efficiently arranged, but the systems were still pretty much the same. If a thing worked, the Empire tended to stick with it.

"Interesting," said Frost, and Silence turned automatically to look at her, though all he could see was her featureless helmet. "According to my suit's sensors, the light and gravity are only a local phenomenon. The rest of the ship is still powered down. Which would seem to suggest someone knows we're here."

"Could be the ship's computers," said Cross.

"No," said Frost. "I don't think so. They would have turned all the life-support systems on."

"Try general address on your comm," said Silence. "See if anyone answers."

"This is Investigator Frost of the Dauntless, representing the Empire. Respond, please."

They waited a long time, but there was no reply. The comm channel was empty of everything, even static. Silence's back crawled, feeling the pressure of unseen watching eyes. The words ghost ship came back to him, along with the half-serious stories that were always circulating during his cadet days. Tales of dead ships populated by dead crews, sailing silently through the long night on journeys that would never end. Skeletons on the bridge, or dead men rotting at their stations, heading for some far off destination the living could never understand. Silence had to smile. He hadn't realized those stupid stories had made such an impression on him.

"Let's make for the bridge, people," he said briskly. "Maybe we'll find some answers there. Investigator, lead the way."

Frost patched into a map of the Champion's structure, provided by the Dauntless's computer records, and set off down the corridor. Lights turned themselves on ahead of them and turned off behind them, so that they moved always in a pool of light surrounded by darkness. Weight remained constant at one gravity, but there was still no air or heat. Silence had the security men check out each room and compartment they passed, but though there were frequent signs of people's lives, there was no trace anywhere of the Champion's crew.

There were unmade beds and abandoned meals, cards discarded in mid game and doors left ajar, as though the people involved had just stood up a hundred or so years ago, and walked away from their lives, never to return.

Silence kept thinking he could see things moving on the edge of his vision, but every time he looked there was nothing there. Shadows moved disturbingly around the small party as they moved deeper into the ship, their hard suits eerily out of place in the crew's quarters. They all had the feeling they were being watched, even though the ship's security cameras clearly weren't working, and the security men spent as much time checking behind them as they did the way ahead. Frost, of course, just strode on through the empty corridors, calm and unmoved as always. Silence stuck close to her.

They finally came to the main elevator. Silence plugged in a portable energy pack; they came back on line. There were walkways, but it would have meant a long climb to the bridge. Silence split the party into two groups, just in case, and they made their way up to the bridge in separate elevators. The cramped metal cages took an uncomfortably long time getting there, not least because they insisted on stopping at every floor in between, but eventually the elevator doors opened onto the bridge, and Silence led the way forward with something very like relief. If there were answers to be found anywhere on this ghost ship, he should be able to find them here.

There was no one sitting in the command chair, skeleton or corpse, and the workstations were unmanned. No sign of any crew. No sign to show they'd ever been here. It was just as Silence had expected, but he still felt obscurely disappointed. Something really cataclysmic must have happened on board the Champion, to mean abandoning the bridge like this. And yet there'd been no signs of attack or mutiny, no damage or signs of haste. Cross leaned over the comm station and tried a few warm-up routines, and then turned away.

"Everything's shut down, Captain. Give me an hour or so and I should be able to bring something on-line. Half these systems will have to be reprogrammed from the bottom up, but everything seems functional."

"The autopilot's still working," said Frost. "Someone must have fed in the coordinates that brought the ship here."

"Hold everything," said Cross. "I've got the security cameras up and working. Which shouldn't be possible, but… watch the monitors."

They all crowded around Cross and stared at the bank of three monitor screens attached to his station. They lit up in swift succession, as though they'd only recently been turned off. Cross switched rapidly from one camera to another the length of the ship, scenes appearing on the viewscreens one after the other, pausing just long enough to give a continuing feeling of emptiness everywhere on board. From corridors to engineering, sick bay to crew's quarters, everywhere was still and silent. It chilled Silence to his bones to see a ship so abandoned, so deserted.

He tried to remember more about the history of the Champion rather than the legend. The Captain, Tomas Pearce, had been something of a fierce officer by all accounts, a strictly by-the-book man, as hard on himself as anyone else. Everyone agreed he ran a tight ship, right up until the day it disappeared. He would never have walked away from his ship, no matter what his crew did. He'd have hit the auto-destruct first. Silence wondered what Pearce would think now if he could see so many posts abandoned, so many stations unmanned. No, he wouldn't have walked. Someone or something must have taken him.

"Hello," said Cross suddenly. "What have we got here?" He fussed at the panels before him, muttering to himself and stabbing awkwardly at the controls with his armored fingers. Hard suits weren't meant for delicate work. "I think I've got something, Captain. The cameras in the main cargo hold are out, but I'm getting some information through the ship's interior sensors. There's something down in the cargo bay. A lot of somethings."

"Hardly unusual for a cargo bay," said Frost.

"It is when the computer manifests are convinced the ship isn't carrying any cargo at all this trip. And, even more interestingly, all these somethings are roughly human in shape."

"Life signs?" said Silence.

"Not so far," said Cross. "But whatever these things are, there are hundreds of them."

"Then, for want of anything better to do, let's go and take a look," said Silence.

He left four of the security men on the bridge to watch the monitors and run further checks on the instruments, and herded the rest of his team back into the elevator. It was a long way down to the cargo bay, but at least they didn't stop at every floor this time. Silence chose to see this as a good omen. The doors finally opened on the main cargo bay, and Frost made the others wait in the elevator while she checked out the situation first. She kept them waiting an uncomfortably long time before waving them out. The bay was deserted, but the lights had already been on when the elevator doors opened, almost as though someone was waiting for them.

The bay itself was huge, with intricately marked steel walls surrounding a vast open space. They'd emerged at ground level, like mice creeping out of their hole. Frost signaled for the group to stay together, while she locked the elevator doors open, just in case they had to retreat in a hurry. As far as Silence was concerned, she needn't have bothered. He'd never felt less like wandering off on his own in his life. Still, as Captain he was expected to provide a good example, so as soon as Frost gave him the all clear, he stepped confidently forward to take a look around.

Away from the elevator, the sheer size of the cargo bay was almost overpowering, but Silence's attention was drawn immediately to the bay's sole cargo; hundreds of long mirrored cylinders, each the size and general shape of a coffin. They'd been laid out in neat rows, forming a perfect square. Silence checked them out from a cautious distance with the limited sensors built into his suit, but the coffin shapes gave up no information at all. He couldn't even tell what they were made of, never mind what might be inside them.

"That's the crew, isn't it?" said Cross quietly.

"Could be," said Silence. "The numbers are about right. Only way to find out is to open a few. Investigator…"

"Way ahead of you, Captain," said Frost, striding forward pugnaciously.

Silence gestured for Cross and the two security men to stay with him. "Take it slow and easy, Investigator. There's always the chance those things are booby-trapped."

"I'll bear it in mind," said Frost. "Now, a little quiet, if you please. I have to concentrate."

She stopped just short of the first outer rank, tried her sensors again, and sniffed disgustedly as they failed to provide any useful information, even at close range. Each cylinder was seven feet long, and the correct proportions for a coffin. Plenty of room for a body inside and any number of unpleasant surprises, too. Frost knelt down by the nearest cylinder and got her first surprise when she realized the mirrored surface wasn't showing her reflection. She examined the edges of the cylinder carefully and got her second surprise. There was no sign of any seals or openings. The entire cylinder seemed to have been produced in one piece. Perhaps… formed around something. The word cocoon occurred to her, echoing in her mind with a significance she couldn't pin down. She straightened up and looked at the rows of cylinders stretching away before her. She had been intending to open one by force, with her gun if necessary, and trust to her hard suit to protect her, but she was beginning to think that was what she was supposed to do. More and more, the whole place felt like a trap. The cylinders were too tempting, and there was too much light, as though the cargo bay was a stage, waiting for the action to begin.

Frost reached out cautiously with her gloved hand to tap the lid of the coffin, and her hand sank through the shining surface as though it was some silvery liquid. And inside the coffin, something grabbed her armored hand and squeezed it hard. She lurched forward, caught off balance, and her arm plunged further through the lid and into the coffin. She quickly braced herself against the steel floor and pulled back, but whatever had hold of her wouldn't release its grip. She could feel the pressure, even through her armored glove. She gritted her teeth, snarling under her featureless helmet, and pulled back with all her strength. The suit's servomechanisms whined loudly. Her arm slowly reappeared from the lid, and then her glove, clasped by a dead white human hand.

The weight on her arm was suddenly lessened as a dead white face appeared through the shining lid like a drowned man's face surfacing in a river, and then the dead man was out of his coffin and standing before Frost, smiling, still holding her hand in his. Her first thought was that it was a Fury, one of Shub's killing machines in a human skin, but then she saw the marks of drastic surgery unhidden on his shaved skull, and she knew at once what had happened to the Champion's crew. He was a Ghost Warrior. All around her, dead men were emerging from the silver coffins, like vile gray butterflies bursting out of shimmering cocoons. The man before her wore a dated fleet uniform, torn and stained with long-dried blood where his death wounds had been. His skin was dead-white, and though his smile was inhumanly wide, there was no emotion in his face and no life in his unblinking eyes. She could hear Silence shouting at her to get away from the dead man, but his gaze held her like a hook she could wriggle on but not escape. The dead men were rising everywhere now, silent and calm, their movements filled with an implacable purpose.

And then the blast from an energy weapon tore away the head of the man before her, and the headless body slumped to its knees. She was suddenly herself again, freed from the dead gaze, and she fell back a step, tugging at her captured hand. The pale fingers still gripped her firmly, despite all her struggles. Frost drew the sword on her hip with her left hand and hacked savagely at the pale wrist. The blade sheared clean through, and she staggered backward, released. The dead hand still clutched at her glove, and she had to cut it away finger by finger as she hurried back to rejoin Silence and the others.

They were all firing now, energy bolts leaping from the disrupters built into their gloves, and dead bodies were blown apart and slapped aside, but still the hundreds of dead moved purposefully forward. Frost took up her place between Silence and Cross, too angry to be frightened or worried. She'd fought every kind of alien in her time, and thought there was nothing left in the Empire that could throw her, but something in the dead man's gaze had held her as securely as any chain. If Silence hadn't blown its head off, she'd have been standing there still, until the dead overwhelmed her and dragged her away to make her one of them. She had no doubt it had been Silence who freed her. She'd have done the same for him. She took a deep breath and settled herself.

"Well," she made herself say calmly, "at least now we know what happened to the Champion's crew. Those bastard AIs somehow got their hands on them, scooped out their brains, and replaced them with their filthy computers. We've found a whole ship of Ghost Warriors."

"Shub is right on the other side of the Empire," said Silence. "But we'll let that pass for the moment. It'll be another two minutes before our disrupters recharge, and I have a strong feeling these creeps could manage something really unpleasant in that time, so everyone free your swords and back away. We are getting the hell out of here."

There was a muffled clang behind them as the elevator doors slammed shut.

"That's not possible," said Frost. "I locked them open."

"Someone's watching," said Cross. "And they don't want us leaving just yet."

"I'll try the bridge," said Silence. "Maybe they can override. Bridge, this is Silence. Can you hear me?" There was no reply, only an ominous quiet.

"Something's got to them," said Cross. "We're on our own."

The dead men stood facing them, row upon row, inhumanly still. One figure stepped forward, wearing an outdated Captain's uniform. Silence tried to recognize Tomas Pearce, but the face before him held nothing of humanity in it. One eye was missing, replaced by a camera lens, and the scars of brutal surgery were clear on his forehead. He came to a halt before Silence, carefully out of a sword's range, smiling widely as though he knew what a smile was supposed to convey, but didn't know how. His kind weren't used for diplomacy or conversation. Ghost Warriors fought Shub's battles with humanity, as much for psychological effect as any functional superiority. The dead man wore a gun and a sword on his hips, but so far had made no move to draw them. Silence found that disturbing. It implied the Ghost Warriors wanted him alive. Pearce's lips moved, and Silence heard a slow, horribly impersonal voice through his comm implant. It was a machine talking—through a human mouth.

"Captain Silence. Investigator Frost. You must come with us."

"Why us?" said Silence.

"Yeah," said Cross. "I feel left out."

"You are different," said Pearce, his dead eyes still fixed on Silence and Frost. "Changed. It is necessary that we discover how."

"Tough," said Frost. "We have other plans. Call our secretary and make an appointment. Captain, get those elevator doors open. I'll hold them off."

She stepped forward, her sword held in both hands, and swung it around in a vicious sideways sweep with all her strength behind it. If it had connected, it would certainly have beheaded Pearce, but he raised his arms impossibly fast and blocked the blow. The blade sank deep into his arm and jarred on splintering bone. In the split second while Frost was still off balance, Pearce reached out with his other hand and snatched the sword out of her hand. Frost snarled and hit him in the throat with her armored glove. The hard suit's servomechanisms amplified the strength of her blow, and she could feel the sickening crunch as her fist crushed Pearce's throat and snapped his neck. His head hung at an angle, but the expression on his face didn't change. He threw her sword aside and reached out with both hands to grab her shoulders. She kicked his legs out from under him, and he fell sprawling on the steel floor. The other Ghost Warriors moved forward in an unhurried, implacable advance, and Frost knew there were just too many of them to be stopped by anything she could do.

She checked the timer inside her helmet and opened up with her disrupters again. Energy blasts erupted from her gloves, slapping aside the advancing dead men like so many curling leaves caught in a fiery breeze. But then her guns fell silent, and the Ghost Warriors kept coming. Pearce was back on his feet again, reaching for her. Frost grabbed up her sword again, determined she'd die before she let them drag her off to Shub's bloody laboratories.

Silence and Cross got to the elevators and used their amplified strength to force the doors open. The two security men charged into the lift, pulled the control mechanism out of the wall, and began quickly preparing an override. Silence would have liked to turn and see how Frost was doing, but he needed all his strength to hold the elevator doors open. They strained against his hands with an almost malevolent urgency, and Silence could hear a faint straining sound from the servomechanisms in his suit's arms. He was wearing an exploratory suit, designed for protection, not the stronger and better-equipped battle suit. It wouldn't last much longer. One of the security men yelled out in satisfaction, and the pressure from the doors was suddenly gone. Silence and Cross let go of them and hurried into the elevator. They turned as one and opened up with their disrupters, the energy bolts blowing away Ghost Warriors to either side of Frost.

"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 had 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 raising 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."

"Understood, Captain. Good luck."

He broke contact, and Silence and Frost headed for the elevators.

"If I didn't know better," said Frost, "I'd swear he's becoming almost human."

"He says much the same about you," said Silence.

They discarded their cumbersome hard suits for greater speed and made their way down to the Epsilon hangars without much trouble. The Dauntless was a much bigger ship than the Champion, and the Ghost Warriors were spread thin, trying to cover too many areas at once. Silence and Frost cut them down when they had to and avoided the rest. They didn't want the enemy to know they were coming. There were a dozen entryways into the Epsilon hangar area, and only a few of them were signposted. Silence and Frost used one of the least obvious and emerged onto a high narrow walkway overlooking the bay without anyone knowing they were there. Some fifty feet below, the Ghost Warriors had cleared a space among the piled-up supply crates, and now a dozen dead men holding disrupters stood guard over an intricate glass and crystal mechanism that glowed with an uncomfortably bright light. Silence pursed his lips thoughtfully and glanced at Frost.

"Even with our new abilities, there's no way we can get to that device without being seen or heard, and that many disrupters makes me nervous. Even if they don't hit us, they could hit the hull. We could wait for reinforcements, but with all that cover to hide behind, they could hold off a small army indefinitely. And we are running out of time."

"If you can distract them," said Frost, "I can blast that device with my disrupter."

Silence raised an eyebrow. "From here?"

"Of course."

Silence thought about it, but shook his head. "No. Odds are it's protected by a force Screen of some kind. I would. And if you fire and fail, we'll have given away our position for nothing. I've got another idea."

Frost looked at him. "This doesn't involve us throwing ourselves away in a grand gesture, does it? I've already tried that, and I wasn't too keen about it the first time."

"This is simpler. I'm suggesting we use our minds for a change. It's not just our bodies that were changed in the Madness Maze. The strain or excesses of nearly dying on the Champion seem to have pushed me another step up the ladder. You, too, probably. We're more than we were. Listen. Concentrate. Can you hear what I'm hearing?"

Frost frowned, listening. The hangar bay was quiet, the Ghost Warriors standing silently on guard. In the stillness she could hear Silence's breathing and her own, and then, very quietly below it all, she sensed as much as heard a low pulsing that rose and fell in sudden spikes. And inside that sound, which wasn't really a sound, she could hear a voice murmuring, cold and inhuman and horribly perfect.

"Damn," said Frost. "It's the machine. I can hear it thinking. Giving orders. It's not a language or any computer code that I'm familiar with, but somehow I can still understand it. This is the signal Stelmach detected from the bridge, the voice that pulls the Ghost Warriors' strings."

"Yes," said Silence. "It is. Apparently, we're becoming espers, along with everything else. But we can do more than listen. Frost. We can hurt it. Concentrate on the link between us."

He reached out clumsily to her with his mind, and she came to him. Their thoughts mixed and meshed, jumbling together, and then suddenly they both came into focus, sharp and brilliant, and their minds slammed together and merged to become a whole that was far greater than the sum of its parts. It leapt up and out from the cramped confines of their bodies and struck at the thinking machine in a lightning flash of roaring energies. The force field didn't even slow it. The machine howled horribly, feeling its destruction without ever knowing what or how, and then its center shattered into a million quiescent pieces, and collapsed upon itself. The Ghost Warriors fell to the floor and lay still, not even twitching. Their mind was dead. The mind that had been Silence and Frost split apart, and they fell back into their bodies. Their minds slowed, weighed down by flesh again, and they both immediately began to forget what it had been like to be more than human. They had to, or they would lose being human forever. And they weren't ready to do that, just yet. They stood staring at each other for a long moment.

"We can't tell anyone about this," Silence said finally. "You know what they'd do to us."

"We have a duty to inform our superiors," said Frost. "Perhaps by examining us, they could find a way to duplicate the process."

"More likely they'd kill us, by taking us apart to see what makes us tick. It wasn't a human technology that changed us, made us what we are. And besides, Lionstone would order us destroyed the moment she heard about us. She'd never allow anything as powerful as us to exist in her Empire.

"We don't have to decide right now. We can talk about it later. For the moment, how are we going to explain what happened here?"

"No problem," said Frost. She drew her disrupter and blew apart what was left of the control mechanism, leaving nothing but a scorch mark on the steel floor. Frost put her disrupter away again. "A lucky shot. As simple as that."

"Show-off," said Silence, and activated his comm implant. "Bridge, this is the Captain. Status report, please. The Ghost Warriors are down, right?"

"I don't know how you did it," said Stelmach, "but according to the reports coming in, the Ghost Warriors just collapsed and gave up the ghost all over the ship. It's over, and we won. Amazing. I wouldn't have bet on it. I may faint."

"Try to hang on till we get back to the bridge," said Silence. "You did well, Stelmach. If you hadn't theorized a central control device and tracked it down, they'd probably have been scooping our brains out with dull spoons by now. You're a hero, just like the rest of your family."

"Some hero. I didn't volunteer to go over to the Champion with you."

"There are different kinds of heroes," said Silence. "What's important is that you came through when it mattered. Silence out."

Silence and Frost leaned on the walkway railing together, looking down into the hangar bay. The Ghost Warriors still hadn't moved. Silence kept an eye on them anyway, just in case.

"I thought we were heading back to the bridge," said Frost.

"In a minute," said Silence. "After all we've been through, I think we're entitled to a short break to get our breath back."

"We do lead an interesting life," said Frost. "At least this time we didn't lose the ship."

"Right," said Silence. "I think we're finally getting the hang of this hero thing." He thought for a moment and then looked at Frost. "Do you really think those voices we heard at the beginning were part of the Shub trap?"

"Of course," said Frost. "What else could they have been?"

Silence shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. It's just… they seemed to be warning us, as much as anything."

"But if they didn't come from the Champion, where did they come from?"

"I don't know. On the whole, I'd rather not think about it. The implications are too disturbing."

"Ah, hell," said Frost. "Everyone knows it gets strange out here on the Rim."

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Circles of Hell

The monitor screen spun a few fractals as its memory warmed up, and then the flaring colors resolved into a sharp holo image. A bleak, metallic horizon, crenellated here and there with shadowy trenches, deep craters, and looming hills of metal scrap, stretched away for miles before vanishing into the early-morning gloom. A dull red sun was rising reluctantly in a gray sky dominated by darkening clouds. The scene was unnaturally quiet, with not even a whisper from beast or bird or insect; the only sound was that of the rising wind, moaning and roaring in turn, as though gathering its strength for the storm to come.

The camera panned slowly right, and a huge factory complex appeared on the holoscreen. Given its great size and tall towers, and the many-colored lights blazing from its windows, it should have dominated the bleak scene, but somehow it didn't. The surrounding area of fractured metals and accumulated scrap looked like the place where old factories went to die. The camera zoomed in slowly, so that the factory filled the screen. Armored guards could now be seen, watching coldly from their trenches and gun emplacements, and it quickly became clear that the factory was under siege from some unseen, ominous foe.

A single figure stepped into view before the camera, making his way carefully over the rutted metal surface. Mud and water had collected in the hollows and splashed up over his boots. He finally came to a halt, half filling the screen, and looked seriously into the camera. Even buried inside a thick fur coat he was clearly short and overweight, and above his ruddy face his flat blond hair was plastered to his skull. But his eyes were calm and his mouth was firm, and without quite knowing why, you felt you could trust him to tell you the truth about what he'd seen. The rising wind tried to ruffle his hair, flapping the long ends, but he ignored it.

"You're looking at Technos III, early morning, early winter. The factor complex behind me, owned and run by Clan Wolfe, will shortly begin mass production of the new and vastly improved stardrive. The workers are dedicated, the management strong and decisive, and the small army of guards are trained, experienced, and utterly determined. Ideal conditions, one would have thought, for such an important venture. But this is Technos III, and things are different here.

"To begin with, while this planet has the usual four seasons, like any colonized world, the seasons here last only two days. Weather conditions therefore understandably tend to the extreme, not to mention the dramatic. In the spring it rains, a constant hammering monsoon that can deliver over an inch of rain in under an hour, every hour. In the summer it bakes, the bare sunlight hot enough to blister unprotected skin in minutes. In the autumn there are hurricanes and raging winds strong enough to pick up unsecured equipment and carry it for miles. In the winter it snows. Thick blizzards and heavy drifts bury the surface and anything else not protected by the factory's force Screen. Exposure to the cold can kill in minutes. Blood freezes and lesser metals crack.

"These conditions are not natural. Those meddling computer terrorists, the cyberats, are responsible. They meddled with the planet's weather satellites, and this changing hell is the result. I'm standing here outside the factory in the early hours of the first day of winter. The temperature has dropped thirty degrees in the last hour, and the winds are rising, giving warning of the blizzards to come. Soon I will have to return to the safety of the factory complex or risk death from a dozen natural causes. Empire technicians are working on repairing the weather satellites as a matter of urgency, and the word is we will have normal conditions restored soon. In the meantime the brave men and women of Clan Wolfe struggle valiantly to bring all systems on-line, so that mass production of the new stardrive can begin as scheduled and as promised. I will, of course, be here to show you the opening ceremony, live.

"This is Tobias Shreck, for Imperial News, on Technos III. Cold, bored, tired, pissed off, really really pissed off, and bloody hungry."

The picture on the monitor screen disappeared, replaced for a moment by spinning fractals before one of the two men watching it leaned over and turned it off. Tobias Shreck, also known as Toby the Troubador—PR flack for Clan Shreck— and as that stupid pratt who managed to really upset his Uncle Gregor and ended up freelancing on a hellworld like Technos III, straightened up and glared at the lowering sky. The darkening clouds were appreciably thicker now, and the gusting wind was so strong he had to brace himself against it. He huddled inside his fur coat, pulled out a filthy-looking handkerchief, and blew his nose noisily.

"I hate this place. The weather's insane, the natives are as friendly as a serial killer on amphetamines, and there isn't a decent restaurant on the whole damn planet. I should have known there had to be some underhanded reason for the Home Office's eagerness to sign me up and offer me an immediate assignment."

"Think positive," said his cameraman, a tall gangling sort called Flynn, wearing a long heavy coat of assorted dead animals that still wasn't long enough to accommodate someone of his great height. He had a deceptively honest face, only partly undermined by the holocamera sitting on his shoulder like a squat, deformed owl. He set about dismantling the lights that had shown Toby to his best advantage and carried on speaking with a blithe disregard as to whether Toby was still listening. "At least we've got nice warm quarters in the complex to hole up in. Those poor sods on guard duty are wearing thermal suits on top of their thermal underwear, and they're still freezing their butts off. I hear if you fart out here, it rolls down your trouser leg onto the ground and breaks."

Toby sniffed. "Those guards are highly paid mercenaries, highly trained in the art of rendering people down into their component parts in the shortest time possible, and therefore by definition not really human. And you can bet they're being paid a damn sight more than you and I are. And the factory complex gives me the creeps. Most of the factory's automated, and the clone workers who do everything the machinery can't are even less human than the guards."

Flynn shrugged, and his camera grabbed his shoulder with clawed feet to steady itself. "Clones aren't employed for their social skills. They've been designed and conditioned to within an inch of their humanity to be the perfect work force, and nothing else. They're here only because there has to be a human decision-making presence at all times. Can't just leave it to the computers. Not after the Shub rebellion."

"We can cut the last few seconds from the tape," Toby said heavily, turning away from the monitor. "Did I leave out anything important?"

"Not really. Technically, you should have mentioned that it was the Campbells who started the ball rolling here, before the Wolfes took it over. And you could have mentioned there are a few local problems with rebel terrorists, which will undoubtably be sorted out soon."

"No I couldn't," said Toby firmly. "The Wolfes would only censor it. We don't need any depth for an introductory piece. Leave it till the interviews, and I'll try and bring it up then. Though you can be sure nothing even remotely good about the Campbells will make it into the final cut. Doesn't make any difference. The Wolfes won the hostile takeover, and no one likes a loser. These days, the few surviving Campbells are about as popular as a fart in an air lock. Let's get inside, Flynn. I can't feel my fingers, and my feet aren't talking to me. And the weather can turn extremely nasty in the blink of an eye when it feels like it. God, I wish I was back on Golgotha. Even attending Court was safer than this."

"Why are you here?" said Flynn. "You never did get around to explaining just what you did to get Gregor Shreck his own bad self so mad at you."

"I don't have to tell you anything," said Toby. "You haven't even told me what your other name is."

"One name is all a cameraman needs. Now, spill all the grisly details, or I'll make you look really podgy on camera."

"Blackmailer. All right, basically, the Church was growing increasingly dubious about the moral probity of its ostensibly faithful son Gregor. I'd been keeping his extremely dubious private habits under wraps through some inventive PR and heavy backhanders where they would do the most good, but stories kept getting out anyway. There was talk of a full Church investigation, and then even all Gregor's money and social standing might not be enough to buy him a clean bill of health. Nasty, disgusting little toad that he is. I told him he'd have to keep a lower profile once he got in bed with the Church, but did he listen? Did he, hell. So, I did the only thing left to me. I figured out who would most likely end up running the investigating team, set him up with a young lady of the evening of my professional acquaintance, let nature take its merry course, recorded it all on film from every angle, and blackmailed him. How was I to know I'd picked one of the few really honest men left in the Church these days? He told all, made a public confession, and I resigned from Gregor's employ before he could fire me. Bearing in mind that Gregor's displeasure tends to be expressed through sudden violence and assassins, I walked into Imperial News and asked for the first assignment they had on the far side of the Empire. And I ended up here. Sometimes I wonder if Gregor got to them first."

"Maybe he did," said Flynn.

"No. He's not that subtle. Being subtle was what he employed me for."

"Well, maybe the winter won't be as bad as everyone says. It couldn't be that bad."

Toby glared at him. "Didn't you watch the briefing tapes? The winters they have here could be officially classified as cruel and unnatural punishment. Snowstorms start with a blizzard and then escalate. The Eskimos have one hundred and twenty-seven different words for snow, and even they have never seen snow like they have here. In fact, if you brought an Eskimo here and showed him the snow, he would stop dead in his tracks and say, Jesus Christ, look at that snow! The winds in winter reach three hundred miles an hour! It snows sideways!" Toby stopped and took a deep breath to calm himself. His doctor had expressly warned him about his blood pressure, but his doctor had never had to work on Technos III. Hell, he wouldn't even make a house call to his neighbor's apartment. Toby scowled up at the sky and then back at the factory. "We'd better get undercover. Bring the equipment."

"You brought it out here," said Flynn, "you take it back. I do not fetch and carry. It's in my contract. I am a cameraman, and the only thing I carry is my camera. I told you that when we started out."

"Oh, come on," said Toby. "You can't expect me to carry the lights and the monitor. All you ever carry is that bloody camera, and if it weighs more than ten ounces, I'll eat the bloody thing."

"I don't move things," said Flynn. "It's not in my nature. If you wanted a pack mule, you should have brought one."

Toby glowered at him and then started gathering up the lights. "God, you people have got a good Union."

Daniel and Stephanie Wolfe, in charge of stardrive production and therefore Lords of all they surveyed on Technos III, helped themselves to another large drink from the automated bar. As aristocrats, they were normally used to the luxury of human servants, but such frills and fancies had no place on a factory world, even for such distinguished visitors as the Wolfes. The drinks weren't very good, either. Stephanie threw herself sulkily into a large supportive chair that tried to give her a soothing massage before she turned it off. She didn't feel like being soothed. Cardinal Kassar was on his way, and she needed to feel in full control for the encounter. Daniel was stalking back and forth across the deep pile carpet like a caged animal, and she wished he wouldn't. It was getting on her nerves.

The room was comfortably large by Technos standards, which meant you might have squeezed ten people into it at most, and only then if you happened to have a crowbar handy. The furnishings were understated to the point of anonymity, and the overbright lighting was giving Stephanie a headache. Daniel finally stopped his pacing and accessed the factory's external sensors. One wall disappeared behind a representation of what the weather looked like outside. Mostly, it looked like snow being blown sideways by very strong winds that had the disconcerting habit of shooting from left to right and then back again just a little faster than the human eye could comfortably cope with. Stephanie turned in her chair so she wouldn't have to look at it and concentrated on her game plan.

Ostensibly, Valentine had sent them here to see that everything went smoothly until mass production of the new stardrive officially began. He'd arranged a ceremony for the big day to be transmitted live across the Empire in prime time, to remind everyone—especially those at Court—where Wolfe money and power came from. Actually, Stephanie had arranged everything. She'd planted the idea for a ceremony in his mind, and then intrigued quietly but continually behind the scenes to ensure that she and Daniel would attend the ceremony rather than Valentine himself. A live broadcast would be the perfect opportunity to throw some heavy but undetectable spanners into the works, slow down if not halt stardrive production, and generally make Valentine look incompetent. Such a high-profile failure might be just the lever she and Daniel needed to pry control of the factory away from Valentine and over to them. And then they'd see who really ran Clan Wolfe.

The local rebels were still a nuisance and would have to be put sharply in their place well before the ceremony. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Kassar had brought a fair-size army of the Faithful with him to back up the numerous Wolfe mercenaries. The natives wouldn't know what hit them. On the other hand, the presence of so many security troops could mean that her carefully planned and considered pieces of sabotage would have to be carried out with great subtlety. If she, or more likely Daniel, were to be caught in the act, all the fast talking in the world wouldn't be enough to save them. Valentine would seize the opportunity to discredit them and quite possibly expel them from the Family. It was what Stephanie would do in his position. She looked up, and there was Daniel, still staring at the faux window, and she knew he wasn't seeing the storm outside.

"Let it go, Daniel," she said softly. "Our father is dead and gone, and there's nothing you or I can do about it."

"No. He's not dead," said Daniel and would not turn away from the storm. "You saw him in the Court. His body's dead, but those bastard AIs on Shub repaired it. Daddy's still alive in there, trapped in a decaying corpse. He recognized me. Spoke to me. We have to rescue him, bring him home."

"What you saw was just a Ghost Warrior," said Stephanie, her voice carefully calm and even. "A dead body held together by servomechanisms and run by computer implants. It was just a machine talking, imitating our father. A composite program, probably derived from father's public holo appearances. The man we knew is dead. He doesn't need us anymore. Forget him."

"I can't." Daniel finally turned his head to look at her, and there was something in his face that gave Stephanie pause. His normally sulky mouth was set in a firm line, and his gaze was steady, determined. "For once, I'm not going to let you talk me out of something I know is right. If there's even a chance Daddy is still alive, I have to rescue him. I have to. I let him down so often when he was alive; I can't fail him now he's dead. You don't need me here. The sabotage is your plan. Kassar can take care of the rebel problem for you. He's got experience in things like that. I can't think about things like that anymore. The rebels don't matter. The factory doesn't matter. Wolfes come first. Always."

Stephanie heaved herself up out of her chair and moved quickly over to join Daniel before the window. "I need you here, Danny. You're my strength. Stay here with me, at least until after the ceremony. We can send agents out to locate our father and discover what his true state is. People with experience in these matters. And that way we can keep things quiet. After all, there are a lot of people with a vested interest in seeing our father doesn't return to head the Family again."

She saw the decision in his eyes before he nodded reluctantly, and she sighed silently with relief. Daniel was too much of a wild card to be allowed to run loose. She needed him at her side, where she could control what he saw and said. He meant well, but he lacked her vision, her focus. She knew what was best for the Family, and it didn't include charging blindly around the Empire on a fool's errand. Dear Daddy was dead, and that was for the best, too. She'd have had him killed eventually anyway. He was in her way.

"If I'm going to stay, find something for me to do," said Daniel. "I feel useless here."

"Perhaps you'd care to work with my troops," said Cardinal Kassar. "Always room for another brave warrior in the service of the Church."

They both turned around sharply, Daniel's hands clenching into fists at being caught unawares. Stephanie nodded coolly to the Cardinal. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of appearing flustered. Even if she wasn't sure how much he might have overheard. The Cardinal stood grandly in the open doorway, his chin held high. He was wearing full battle armor, even in the supposed safety of the factory's private quarters—which might have been down to Church paranoia, or maybe a veiled insult to the Wolfes, in that he didn't trust them to ensure his safety. Stephanie thought he was most likely wearing it because he thought it made him look strong and soldierly.

In which case it was almost successful. The great bas-relief crucifix on his chest tried hard to draw the eye, but Kassar's ravaged face would not be ignored. Half eaten away by acid, the scarred side of his face looked more like a skull than a living countenance, even down to the gleaming teeth visible through the rents in his cheek. Stephanie managed a gracious smile, but didn't move, and stuck close beside Daniel so he wouldn't, either. Let Kassar come to them.

The Cardinal was late, but she'd expected that. Kassar was the kind of man who always kept people waiting, just to show how important he was. He needed little victories like that to sustain him, especially since being ordered to Technos III. Officially, it was an opportunity. The Church had sent him a small army of the Faithful and a dozen elite Jesuit commandos to help the Wolfe forces defeat the rebel terrorists. The Church of Christ the Warrior didn't normally do favors for the aristocracy, let alone Clan Wolfe, but like everyone else, the Church's future power was dependent on gaining access to the new stardrive. Those who got there first would have a temporary but very real advantage over those who did not. And the Church had not got where it was by ignoring possible advantages. The fact that the Church despised the Wolfe Family in general, and its current head Valentine in particular, could not be allowed to get in the way of political one-upmanship. Needs must when the devil drives.

Kassar especially had no love for the Wolfes, but none the less he had lobbied almost savagely for the posting. The war on Technos III was a chance to show what he could do as a commander of troops, and that was after all the fast track to advancement within the Church. Piety was all very well, but it was victory in arms that got you promoted. And though he barely admitted it even to himself, Kassar needed to be sure of his own courage. He couldn't help feeling he'd made rather a poor showing when the Ghost Warrior and the Fury and the alien broke loose that day at Court. He could have done something, something brave and commanding to save the day, but instead he'd just stood there like all the others with his mouth hanging open. People must have seen him doing nothing, even if no one dared to say so to his face. So he had come to Technos III to win a great victory, whatever the cost, and then no one would have any doubts about his valor. Not even him.

They stood looking at each other for a long moment, all three with their own private thoughts, none of them willing to make the first move. Finally, Stephanie took one step forward and extended a hand to Kassar. He took a step forward, accepted the hand, and bowed curtly over it. His handshake was firm but brief. Daniel stayed where he was and nodded briefly. Kassar nodded back.

"Welcome to Technos III, Cardinal," said Stephanie, her voice gracious but cool. "Sorry about the weather, but if you don't like it, stick around, and something else will come along shortly. The weather here changes its mind like a village priest caught between two sins. I trust your men are settling in comfortably?"

"My men are preparing for their first assault on the rebel positions," said Kassar. "Comforts can wait. You've let the terrorists get away with far too much, but given the small size of your forces, I can't say I'm surprised. Why haven't you pressed some of the factory workers into service? I can supply whatever arms and armor may be needed."

"I think not, Cardinal," said Stephanie. "All the workers here are clones, bred and designed solely for factory work. And you don't give clones weapons."

Kassar shrugged carelessly, to cover his faux pas. "As you wish. My troops are more than enough to get the job done. Now, Daniel, what do you say? Shall I find a place for you in our ranks?"

"Wolfes didn't fight for other people," Daniel said flatly. "We fight for ourselves. Always."

A silence fell that could have been awkward, as each party present was damned if they'd be the first to break it, and then the tension was broken as Toby the Troubador and his cameraman Flynn came bustling through the open door. Toby nodded briskly to all present and gestured for Flynn to find a position where he could cover everyone with his camera.

"Morning, one and all," he said cheerfully. "Isn't it a perfectly awful day? Hope I'm not interrupting anything vital, but I really do need to get some footage of the Cardinal meeting his hosts. That kind of thing always plays well with the audience, and it'll make a good introduction to the campaign to come. Don't worry, I'll keep it short and to the point. I'm sure you've all got things you'd rather be doing."

Daniel gave Toby his best intimidating scowl. "Is this really necessary?"

"I'm afraid so," said Stephanie quickly. "Public relations can be a bore and a bind, but we can't do without it. Public acclaim can often get you things that nothing else can. The stardrive ceremony will be an important event, and I want it covered very thoroughly. After all, absolutely everyone will he watching. Grit your teeth and bear it, Daniel. It'll soon be over."

"That's the spirit," said Toby. "Cardinal, if you'd care to stand between the Wolfes, make a nice group for the camera…"

Kassar glowered at him, but moved obediently as directed to stand between Stephanie and Daniel. And though they stood close together, none of them so much as nudged another with their elbow. Toby bustled around them, raising an arm here, squaring a shoulder there.

"All right, people, just hold the pose while Flynn gets the lighting right, and then we'll do a short interview. Nothing complicated, just how glad you all are the Cardinal's here, that sort of thing. Fake the smiles if you have to."

"You are aware, Shreck," said Kassar coldly, "that your uncle is currently being investigated by the Church on charges of sedition and corruption on many levels?"

"Nothing to do with me," Toby said airily. "You can haul him off in chains, for all I care. I'll even supply the chains. Just give me some warning so I can get the rotten fruit concession."

"He is the head of your Family," said Daniel. "You owe him allegiance. Have you no honor?"

"Of course not," said Toby. "I'm a journalist."

"We will of course want to see all reports in their entirety before they can be transmitted," said Stephanie. "So that they can be checked for bias and possible inaccuracies."

"The Church censors will also examine all footage," Kassar said quickly. "To check for blasphemies or disrespect. Standards must be maintained."

Toby kept smiling, though his cheeks were beginning to ache from the strain. "Of course. Whatever you wish. Don't worry about inconveniencing me. I'm used to working with people looking over my shoulder."

He fussed the three of them about some more, partly to get the best grouping for the camera and partly just because he could. He'd expected some kind of censorship, but he could see that getting anything interesting off Technos III was going to take a lot of hard work, a little subtlety, and every dirty trick in the journalist's handbook. Still, when in doubt let the material go over their heads. They can't censor what they don't recognize. He had great hopes of what the Technos III material might do for him and his career, and he wasn't going to let these three stuffed shirts get in his way. The day he couldn't think rings around any censor they could throw at him, he'd give up journalism and go into politics. They'd believe anything there.

This was his first real assignment in too many years, after spending so long buried in the Shrecks' Public Relations department, because Gregor needed him. The right kind of reporting here could make his reputation, establish him as a journalist and commentator in his own right. Toby wanted that. The essence of a good PR man is that no one should notice his work. Toby felt very strongly that he'd earned a chance to show off his talents on a wider and more visible screen. Of course, he couldn't hope to make much of a splash just covering the events leading up to the stardrive ceremony. The real story lay in covering the Technos III conflict, the Wolfe and Church forces versus the rebel terrorists. And he was going to cover it, despite anything the Wolfes and the Church could do to stop him.

He looked back at Flynn, who nodded briefly to show he was ready. The camera on his shoulder studied the three dignitaries with its red owl eye, linked into Flynn's eyes through his comm implant, so that he saw what it saw. Daniel and Stephanie and Kassar smiled determinedly at the camera, all friends together, ready for their interview. As in all politics, individual problems disappeared in the need to present a solid front to a common enemy.

The Church ship Divine Breath hung in orbit above Technos III, comfortably far above the seething weather, ostensibly on guard but mostly just goofing off in the absence of the Cardinal and his Jesuit enforcers. After all, they had nothing to do but watch a few sensors while they waited for the Cardinal's troops to make short work of a few native discontents. Easy work. Everyone knew there wasn't a rebel born who could stand against trained troops of the Faithful. So a soft duty for once, and the crew took advantage of it. Which was why when the giant golden Hadenman ship dropped suddenly out of hyperspace just above them, the whole crew took one look and all but shit themselves. The huge ship hung above them, dwarfing the Church vessel like a minnow next to a killer shark. The Church crew snapped to attention at their posts, their hands moving desperately over their control panels. Shields slammed into place as guns powered up, and even those whose piety wasn't all it might have been found a sudden need to send up prayers of the most fervent kind.

The Hadenman ship opened fire, and the Divine Breath shuddered as disrupter cannon hammered against their shields. The Church ship fired back as fast as it could get its guns to bear, but the golden ship was impossibly fast for its size, and the crew of the Divine Breath knew they were hopelessly outclassed. They fought on anyway, not through their faith as much as because there was nothing else they could do. They couldn't drop into hyperspace without lowering their shields first, and the moment they did that the Hadenman ship would blow them apart.

The Captain watched his shields go down one by one and called for more power, though he already knew he was using everything the ship's straining engines could produce. If he'd only had one of the new stardrives being produced on the planet below, he might have stood a better chance, and the irony was not lost on him. And then, as he searched frantically for something—anything—to do to hold off the inevitable, the great golden ship suddenly disappeared back into hyperspace, gone between one moment and the next.

The Captain blinked a few times, clutched at the crucifix on his uniform collar, and muttered a few Hail Marys, and then sank back in his command chair, cold sweat slowly evaporating on his forehead. His ship had survived, but he was damned if he knew why. When he finally got his strength back he canceled Red Alert, ordered full damage reports, and a complete sensor sweep of the surrounding space, just in case. He then wondered what the hell he was going to say to the Cardinal down below. He'd have to be told, even though he'd probably shout a lot. The Captain frowned, trying hard to come up with some viable-sounding excuse that wouldn't get him court-martialed or excommunicated. There was no getting away from the fact that he and his crew had been caught with their pants around their ankles, but damn it, it had been a Hadenman ship! There weren't many who'd seen one of those in action and lived to tell of it. The Captain and his crew worked hard on their various excuses and explanations, which was at least partly why they never noticed the heavily shielded escape pod that the Hadenman ship had dropped just before it disappeared.

The pod hurtled down through the buffeting clouds and howling winds, battered this way and that by the storm's fury, but still somehow holding to its planned descent. Inside the pod, Jack Random the professional rebel, Ruby Journey the ex-bounty hunter, and Alexander Storm the retired hero, clung desperately to their crash webbing and waited for the long drop into hell to end. The pod's outer hull groaned and squealed from the pressures it endured, and the sensors blinked out one by one till they were practically flying blind. The webbing cushioned and absorbed most of the shocks the pod encountered as it fell on and on into Technos III's turbulent atmosphere, but the three rebels were still flung this way and that in the webbings' restricted arcs.

Storm gritted his teeth and tried hard to hang on to his last meal. Random ignored it all, concentrating on what he was going to do when he finally landed. It was his first time back in the business of armed rebellion, and while he was quite definitely looking forward to it, he couldn't help but worry. It had been a long time, and he wasn't all the man he used to be. Either way, it wouldn't stop him giving this mission his all. And if in the end everything went to hell in a handcart, what better way for a professional rebel to die than with gun and sword in his hand, and a pile of the enemy dead at his feet? Random sniffed sourly. Actually, he could think of a dozen better ways to make his final exit, mostly including a good wine and a bad woman, but he doubted he'd see any of them. Rebels rarely died in bed.

Beside him, Ruby Journey was laughing and whooping loudly as she spun to and fro in her webbing, enjoying every minute of the trip down. Random smiled at her. How could you not love a woman like that? He checked the sensor panels again, but they were still out, the pod's sensor spikes torn away by the shrieking winds. The proximity alarms sounded, harsh and strident, and Random braced himself. Either the ground was near, or they were about to crash into a mountain. Ruby whooped wildly. Storm had his eyes squeezed shut, as though that would make any difference. Random sighed and tried to remember if there were any mountains on Technos III. He didn't think so, but it would have been nice to be sure.

The escape pod slowed desperately as the engines gave up the last of their power to cushion the landing. The three occupants were pinned helplessly in their webbing, listening to the inner and outer hulls cracking from the strain. The lights went out, replaced by the dull red glow of emergency lighting. And then the pod slammed into the metallic surface of Technos III, plowed a long path through the scattered scrap and debris, and finally came to a halt against a massive protruding steel spur. The pod rocked back and forth and then settled itself. The sky was dark and forbidding, the winds were rising, and the first snows were beginning to fall.

Inside the pod, Storm still had his eyes squeezed shut and was trying to remember how to breathe. Random lay slumped in his webbing and thought, not for the first time, that he was getting a little old for all this. Ruby Journey wiped at her bloody nose with the back of her hand and laughed happily.

"That was great! Let's do it again!"

"Let's not," said Storm, still not opening his eyes. "I've had more fun in front of a firing squad. Next time, may I suggest we try and find a pod that's a little less past its sell-by date? Oh, God, I feel awful. Somebody please tell me we are safely down, because I'm not budging an inch until I'm sure the drop is over. And I want it in writing. With witnesses."

"Shut up, Alex," said Random easily. "We're down in one piece, and that's all I ever asked from a landing. And for an escape pod that's been sitting around in a Hadenman ship unused and untested for decades, I think it did pretty well."

"Now he tells us," said Storm. "I knew there was a good reason why I gave up personal appearances as a rebel."

"Shut up, Alex," said Random. "Ruby, the sensors are all out. Crack open the hatch and see what's outside."

Ruby disentangled herself from her webbing, threw Random a professional salute, and made her way carefully over the slanting floor to the one and only hatch. Random clambered slowly out of his webbing, wincing at several new bruises and a few old injuries, and moved over to persuade Storm to open his eyes. Ruby cracked the hatch and pushed it outward. The metal resisted a moment and then gave way. A blast of cold air and swirling snow swept into the pod, along with just enough light to fade the crimson emergency lights to a rather sweet pink color. Storm opened his eyes.

"Oh, wonderful. We've landed inside a birthday cake."

"Shut up, Alex. Ruby, what's it like out there?"

"Cold," said Ruby brightly. "And there's enough snow coming down to make an army of snowmen. Which is just as well, as there's no sign anywhere of a welcoming committee."

Random scowled. "According to the handful of instruments that are still working, we are in the right place, more or less. No doubt our contacts will be here soon. They must have seen us come down. Hurry up, Alex, shake a leg. We have revolutions to organize."

"I never did like fieldwork," said Storm, moving painfully toward the hatch. "Undercover is a young man's work. Usually, a young man who won't be missed too badly if it all turns pear-shaped."

"Whinge, whinge, whinge," said Random, half pushing Storm out the hatch. "Anyone would think you weren't happy to be here, striking a blow for freedom and democracy."

"Anyone would be right," said Storm, and then shut up as the full force of the cold hit him.

The three of them huddled together in the lee of the escape pod, sheltering from the driving storm. The jagged metal surface was already disappearing under a thick blanket of snow, and the rising wind was whipping up into a blizzard. They all turned up the heating elements in their clothes, hugged themselves fiercely, and beat their hands together. The cold was sharp enough to take away their voices, and their breath steamed thickly about their heads. The snow was so thick the sky was completely hidden, as well as the sun. It was supposed to be midday, but there was hardly enough light to see by. Random could feel Storm shivering violently beside him and began to be concerned. Storm's old bones couldn't survive this cold for long. Random didn't feel the cold too badly, but he'd been through the Madness Maze.

"This is undoubtably a silly question," said Storm through teeth clenched to keep them from chattering. "But why can't we get back inside the pod? It's got to be warmer than this."

"The pod's heaters got knocked out along with everything else," said Random. "And there's a small but definite chance the batteries are leaking poisonous gasses. If you want to take your mind off the cold, keep your eyes open for our contacts. In this blizzard they could walk right past us without noticing. But if they don't come soon, we may have to risk the gasses. You can't handle cold like this."

"I can handle any cold you can, you old fart," Storm said angrily. "I'm only six years older than you, I'll have you remember."

"Sure, Alex. Now, shut up and conserve your strength."

"Always were a bossyboots, Jack."

"How far are we from the rebel base?" said Ruby, trying hard to be tactful for once.

"We don't know," said Storm. "They wouldn't tell us. Just gave us landing coordinates and told us we'd be contacted. I hate going into situations blind. I just hope the paranoid bastards find us before the Empire forces do. We were promised a distraction to keep them occupied somewhere else, but I'm growing less trusting by the second. I would also like to point out that I am losing all feeling in my extremities."

"Don't worry," said Random. "At your age you don't use them for much anyway."

"You can go off people, you know," said Storm.

They fell silent for a while, the cold air searing their lungs. They huddled closer together, trying to share their warmth, eyes straining against the swirling snow. Dark outcroppings of metal showed dimly through the storm, but there was no sign of life anywhere. Random beat his gloved hands together and looked longingly at Ruby's thick furs over her leathers. He'd thought she just insisted on wearing them to keep up her barbarian image, but maybe she'd paid more attention at the briefings than he had. He wouldn't be surprised. There was a sharp mind at work behind her carefully crafted image. He coughed and sneezed harshly. Something in the air was irritating his throat. Even allowing for the bitter cold, the air was thicker than he was used to, and it smelled as though someone else had breathed it first. The locals had assured him it was breathable, once you got used to it. Random suspected it was an acquired taste. They'd said much the same about the changing weather, but Random wasn't convinced. The locals had also said the blizzard would make good cover for a landing. Random wondered if he'd be allowed to shoot the person who said that for criminal understatement.

He looked across at Storm, and his concern grew. There was no color left in the man's face, and he was shuddering violently. Random gestured at Ruby, and she took off her furs and wrapped them around Storm. It seemed to help him a little. Ruby wouldn't feel the difference. She'd been through the Maze, too. Random frowned. He'd been thinking of Storm as an old man, someone who ought to be happily retired, sitting in a book-lined study beside a blazing fire, with adoring grandchildren at his feet, but he really wasn't much older than Random. He still mostly remembered Storm as a tousle-headed young warrior, always laughing, ready to throw himself into the thick of things at a moment's notice. But that was a long time ago, and Random was shocked as he realized just how long. Storm had to be in his mid fifties by now, and the long years of struggle had not been kind to him. Random frowned and wondered if maybe he shouldn't have brought Storm with him, after all. Storm had volunteered, but then, he'd never been able to say no to Jack Random. Who was no youngster himself anymore, even if he had been through the Maze. His frown deepened. He didn't think of himself as old, even after all he'd been through, so he supposed Storm didn't, either. But they sure as hell weren't young anymore. Ruby suddenly pushed herself away from the shelter of the pod and stared out into the storm.

"Heads up, people. Company's coming."

"Can you see them?" said Random, stepping forward to stand beside her.

"No. But I can feel them. They're coming this way."

Random concentrated, but couldn't feel anything. The Maze had changed them all in different ways. The first dark shapes began to appear out of the snow, and Storm forced himself to move forward and stand with his friends. It was a matter of pride. There were ten locals finally, standing before them all wrapped in furs, their faces hidden behind leather and metal masks in the shapes of stylized animal heads, none of which Random recognized. Except to note they were all pretty damn ugly. One of the locals stepped forward, looked at the three of them, and then pulled aside his mask to reveal a grim, heavily bearded face. It was a hard-used face and could have been any age. Several long scars marred his features, deep and pitted, and his eyes were dark and very cold.

"Where are the rest of you?" he said harshly, looking at Ruby.

"We're all there is," Random said calmly. "You talk to us about the local situation, and if we're convinced, we'll contact the underground and they'll send armed volunteers, weapons, and supplies. You understand there's a lot of calls on our limited resources. We have to be sure they go where they're most needed. I'm Jack Random. This is Ruby Journey and Alexander Storm. Give them plenty of room. They bite. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?"

"You're Random!" said the local incredulously. "I thought…"

"Yes," said Random regretfully. "Most people do. Just try and think of my age as experience on the hoof. Is there somewhere else we could continue this conversation? Somewhere a few degrees above absolute zero?"

"Of course. I'm Tall John. I command here. Follow me."

He pulled his mask back into place, turned, and set off into the storm without looking back. The locals moved off after him, as silently as they'd arrived. Random grabbed Storm and got him moving. Ruby took Storm's other arm, and the three of them stumbled off into the blizzard, hurrying as best they could to keep up with Tall John and his people. The pod was quickly lost in the snow behind them, and they soon lost all sense of direction. No matter where they looked there was only snow, and the dark figures trudging on before them. Time passed, and the bitter cold of the wind cut at them like knives as the pressure of the winds increased. And then the dark figures suddenly began to disappear, one by one. The last turned and beckoned them forward. He pushed aside his mask, revealing Tall John's face again.

"This is it. Welcome to the outer circles of hell."

He gestured at his feet, stepped forward, and descended into a gap in the snow that Random could only just make out through the blizzard. Random moved forward cautiously and suddenly found himself on the edge of a deep trench, some six feet wide, falling away deeper than his eyes could follow. He could just make out the steps cut into the near wall, and he followed the retreating Tall John down into the trench. Storm came next, slowly and very carefully, followed by Ruby. The trench turned out to be some fifteen feet deep, with snow and slush already ankle-deep at its bottom. Tall John was waiting for them and gestured for them to follow him into one of the many narrow runnels leading off from the far wall.

Random followed the local into a dimly lit tunnel barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast, and so low he had to keep his head bowed to avoid banging it on the roof. Roof and walls were both made of metal, crudely polished in places, and it occurred to Random that he'd seen nothing else on this planet. Except snow. He could hear Storm and Ruby following close behind. He glanced back, but Storm seemed to be holding up okay. It was discernibly warmer in the tunnel. The warmth slowly rose as they made their way on, until finally they emerged into a steel cavern some twenty by thirty feet.

The walls had been jaggedly cut from the many layers of compressed scrap metal covering the planet's surface, and no efforts had been made to disguise or cover this. There was no furniture, and the only light came from scattered candles in glass jars. A central metal brazier contained brightly glowing coals, and Storm headed straight for it with his hands outstretched. Random and Ruby joined him, though a little less quickly, for pride's sake. They both kept one hand at a time unobtrusively near hidden weapons. Random hadn't lasted this long by trusting people who just happened to turn up at a meeting place. He should have insisted on a password, but there hadn't been time. Random liked passwords. They appealed to his sense of the dramatic.

Tall John stripped off an outer layer of furs to reveal a tall rangy man with long dark hair, a steady gaze and a mouth set in a stern line. Beside him stood another of the figures from the storm, pulling open her furs to reveal a short, chunky woman with a great mane of knotted dark hair above a pale, round face. She flashed the three newcomers a broad smile and nodded to them amiably. Like Tall John, time and the world had used her hard, and she could have been any age at all.

"I'm Throat-slitter Mary. Don't mind Tall John. When you get to know him, he's really a pain in the ass. He and I will speak for the others. You'll meet them later. You're welcome here, but I have to say you're not what we were hoping for. We need reinforcements, weapons, supplies, and lots of them."

"We didn't expect two old men and a bounty hunter," said Tall John.

Random shrugged, not upset. "There's more to us than meets the eye. And if you can convince us of the strategic importance of your needs, you'll get everything you could hope for. So talk to us. Fill us in on what's been happening on Technos III. Your initial contact was intriguing, but short on detail."

"All right," said Throat-slitter Mary. "Short and to the point. Like me. We're fighting a trench and tunnel war with the Empire forces. At the center of everything is the factory, getting ready to mass produce the new stardrive. Around the factory lies a series of trench circles. The Empire controls the inner trenches, we control the outer, and we spend most of our time fighting over the ones in the middle. There's maybe fifteen thousand of us left. There used to be a lot more, but the years have whittled us away.

"We're all that remains of the original colonists of Technos III. Our ancestors were indentured workers, paying off the cost of their transport by terraforming the planet and establishing industries. Theoretically, once all the debts were paid off, Technos III was theirs. Only somehow there were always more debts for each new generation.

"The original company in charge went broke. Others came in and took over, running the planet as a business while they asset-stripped it. The companies came and went, but we stayed. We had to. Our ancestors had been genetically altered to enable them to survive on this world. Terraforming can only do so much. If you three stay here long enough, this planet will kill you in a dozen subtle ways. We can't leave this world without some pretty basic changes in our body chemistry, which we've always been denied. Officially, because it would be too expensive. Besides, where else were they going to find such a useful, trapped, workforce?

"As companies came and went, each more cheapjack than the one before, leaving their failures behind them to poison the land, the whole surface of the planet gradually disappeared under deserted factories, installations, and other high-tech junk. Right up until today. The Campbells were a bunch of bastards, but the Wolfes are worse. They don't give a damn for this planet. All they care about is their precious factory. Everything else has been left to rust and rot. We've inherited a world dominated by deserted mile-long factories, abandoned construction sites, and worked-out mines. The Wolfes, and the Campbells before them, chose this planet precisely because it's such a mess. They could do anything they liked here, and no one would give a damn. Who's going to care about pollution on a world like this? It's already been poisoned so thoroughly that only native life like us could survive here. And no one cares about us. At first we were an embarrassment. Now, we're rebel terrorists. Life on this planet has been driven underground. We survive, together. We live off the remaining flora and fauna, and they live off us, when we're not fast enough. But our time is running out.

"Once the Wolfes have got their factory up and running, they'll be able to afford armies of mercenaries to force us back, so they can build more factories. And once that happens, they won't stop till we're extinct. We have to stop this factory coming on-line. It's our only hope."

"Sounds straightforward enough," Random said briskly. "It's a regrettably common scenario in the Empire these days, though this is perhaps a more extreme case than most. Tell me about the weather. I gather it's rather unusual here."

"That's one way of putting it," said Tall John. "Ever since the cyberats screwed up the weather satellites over two hundred years ago, the seasons here have lasted exactly two days, over and over again. The planet's various owners have been trying to repair the satellites for decades, with no luck whatsoever. Most life here couldn't adapt and died out. What little did survive, did so by being extremely tough. And not a little eccentric. During the winter, anything with any sense hibernates. In the spring, everything wakes up, explodes, and proliferates. They live, fight, and breed in the summer. Then they feed exhaustively and build nests in the autumn, deep down, away from the razorstorms and the hurricanes. Then they sleep through the winter so they can wake in the spring and do it all again. Life here is nothing if not adaptable. It's had centuries of practice.

"And that's Technos III in a nutshell. Perfect for vacations. Bring the kids. Of course, the war ignores such trivialities as the seasons; it goes on day in, day out, whatever the weather. You've arrived as autumn turns to winter—the nearest we've got to a quiet time. Our people and the Wolfe mercs take the opportunity for a breather, plan our revenges, and bury our dead. But don't think you can relax. You've got maybe two hours before the killing starts again. So welcome to hell, gentlemen and bounty hunter. Maybe now we can get to the important questions, like: When are the others coming? How large an army can you supply us with? How many weapons?"

Storm and Ruby both looked at Random. He sighed and met the rebels' gaze as calmly as he could. "I'm afraid there isn't any army. Not yet. The underground is raising volunteers for the great rebellion on hundreds of worlds, but it's a long slow process. Such trained men as we have are scattered across the Empire where they can do the most good. For the moment we're all you're getting."

"I don't believe I'm hearing this," said Tall John, his voice shaking with barely suppressed anger. "We were promised battle-hardened fighters, led by the legendary Jack Random, the professional rebel. And what do we get: two old men and a professional back stabber. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just throw the three of you out into the winter to freeze?"

Random snatched the gun out of Tall John's hand, lifted him off his feet with one hand, and pressed the gun under the rebel's chin. Tall John's eyes bulged as his feet kicked a good foot above the floor. Before the surrounding rebels could react, Random put Tall John down again and offered him his gun back. The rebel leader took it automatically and blinked confusedly. The rebels looked at each other uncertainly. Throat-slitter Mary was grinning. Ruby sniffed.

"Show-off."

Tall John pulled his dignity about him again and nodded curtly to Random. "Not bad for an old man."

"There's more to us than meets the eye," said Storm smoothly.

"There would have to be," said Throat-slitter Mary. "Well, if you're all we're going to get, we'd better make the most of you. Come with me, and I'll introduce you to a few of our strategists. Ragged Tom and Specter Alice should have a few ideas. They usually do."

"Interesting names you have here," said Storm. "Hasn't the concept of surnames made it this far yet?"

"Our ancestors were indentured workers," said Tall John. "Slaves, in all but name. They just had numbers. We're free, so we choose our own names or accept those given to us by others. Surnames are for people with families and a future. We live from day to day and depend on no one but ourselves. There's no room for luxuries on Technos III."

In a small private gymnasium, in the great hulking residential building attached to the factory, Michel Wolfe, reluctant husband to Stephanie, was working out on the parallel bars. Sweat dripped from his bulging muscles as he pushed himself through the strenuous routine his computers had recommended. He grunted and huffed with every effort, eyes squeezed shut, scowling with concentration. He'd originally acquired his muscles from a Golgotha body shop and just went back for quick touch-up if they looked like they might be sagging a bit. But out here in the wilds, far from civilization, he had to maintain his muscles the hard way, like it or not. Michel hated every minute of it. It was entirely too much like hard work; and if he'd wanted to work hard, he wouldn't have married into the aristocracy.

He dropped down from the bars and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. The marriage had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now he was beginning to wish he'd stayed an accountant. You knew where you were with figures. If you did your job properly, the numbers added up to a single, undeniable total. No arguments, no opinions, no having to care what anybody else said. Life in the Families wasn't like that. The answer to any question tended to depend on who you were talking to at the time. And heaven help you if you got it wrong, or even worse, didn't give a damn. Everyone was plotting with everyone else, and if you chose the wrong side, death was often the easiest way of losing. And you weren't allowed not to choose a side. Just by being part of a Clan you inherited feuds, arguments, and hatreds that went back centuries. Michel sighed and thought about doing fifty sit-ups. And then he thought the hell with it. Let his abdominals sag. See if he cared. He sighed again.

"What's the matter, lover?" said Lily Wolfe from the doorway.

Michel looked around quickly. Lily Wolfe, reluctant wife of Daniel, was standing in the open doorway, striking another of her poses. This was her favorite: one leg forward, chest out, head slightly back, designed to pull his eyes up her body, showing off her six-foot-six willowy frame, from her incredible legs all the way up to her pouting mouth. She was wearing another of her pagan witchy outfits, all flapping silks and earth colors, designed to make her look long, pale, and interesting. She'd swapped her usual long silver wig for a mop of bright red curls that didn't really suit her, but was presumably meant to give her an air of gypsy abandon. It didn't matter. She was beautiful. She was always beautiful. Michel smiled at her in spite of himself. Every time he saw her he fell in love with her all over again, even if it was about as sensible as clutching a live grenade to his bosom. Everyone has one true love in their life, someone who fills their life with light and turns their bones to water, and God help him, she was his. He reached for the nearby towel and wiped the sweat from his face.

"What brings you here, Lily?" he said finally, trying hard to sound casual though his pulse was already racing. "I didn't think you even knew this place existed. And I've told you before; don't call me lover in public. It's not safe."

Lily shrugged. "There's only one kind of exercise I've ever been interested in. Anything else is just a waste of good sweat. And I've never been interested in being safe, either. Now, are you going to come over here and kiss me, or am I going to have to come and get you?"

Michel draped his towel over one shoulder and moved unhurriedly over to join her. It was important to him that he kept some kind of control, even though he knew he'd lose it all the moment he took her in his arms. He had to tilt his head up to kiss her. He was a good six inches shorter than her, but that had never bothered him. It just meant that there was that much more of her for him to love. And when he crushed her in his arms like some long delicate flower and her perfume filled his head like a drug, he didn't give a damn about anything but her.

Lily always said they were made for each other. His dark and swarthy looks complemented her pale high cheekbones, like two sides of the same gypsy coin. They were soul mates, meant for each other, and nothing could keep them apart. She said a lot of things like that, but he didn't usually listen. It was enough that she was there. He belonged to her, body and soul, even though he knew he'd probably end up dying for her, if they were ever found out.

He finally pushed her away, though he didn't let go of her.

"This complex may not be as openly bugged as we're used to, but that doesn't mean somebody couldn't be watching us," he said heavily. "That bug scrambler of yours has its limits. Daniel and Stephanie may be so preoccupied with getting this factory up and running that we're being allowed a longer leash than usual, but we still have to be careful. If they were ever presented with hard evidence of our love, they'd have to have us executed—or be a laughing stock. Even worse, they might throw us out of the Family. I love you, Lily, but I won't be poor again for you."

"You worry too much," said Lily, laughing silently at him from beneath heavy eyelids.

"And you don't worry enough," said Michel, meeting her gaze firmly. "We're only here on this benighted back end of nowhere because our respective spouses don't trust us out of their sight. So far all they have are suspicions. Their egos won't let them believe anything less than hard evidence, so let's not get careless and provide them with any. We have to be careful, Lily. We have so much to lose."

"You're so boring when you're being sensible," said Lily. She pouted like a child and pulled out of his arms. "You should listen more to the ancient voices within you, the dark savage beat of your own primitive emotions. Civilized behavior is just a cloak we wear, that we can slip off whenever we choose. But for once, I agree with you. I came here to talk."

Michel folded his arms across his great chest. "So talk. I'm listening, darling."

Lily flashed him a wide smile, and suddenly she didn't look at all childish anymore. "Daniel and Stephanie have a great deal invested in this factory's success. If they were to fail, if something were to go wrong here, they'd have even less time to pay attention to us. So you might say we have a vested interest in their failure. Yes, I thought you'd like that. Now, let's take the argument one step further. If they were to die here, you and I would inherit all their world goods and their position in the Family. And considering that dear Constance doesn't give a damn about the Family and never has, and dear Valentine is a complete lunatic whose regular intake of dubious chemicals would suggest he isn't long for this world anyway… if we were to play our cards very carefully, we could end up with everything."

"And we could end up very dead," said Michel. "Kill them? Are you crazy? You've been thinking again, haven't you? I hate it when you think. Our position is precarious enough as it is. Arranging a plausible accident for the factory is one thing, but if Daniel and Stephanie were to die, whatever the situation, the first people they'd arrest would be me and you. Precisely because we have so much to gain. And you can't lie to an esper."

"Unless… the deaths could clearly be put at someone else's door," said Lily calmly. "Someone who hates them even more than we do. Like the local rebels, perhaps."

"All right," said Michel. "I just know I'm going to regret this, but tell me more."

Lily half turned away from him, her eyes lost in the distance. "You've never believed in my witchy powers, Michel, but they've been stronger than ever since we came here. I've… seen things, felt things, ridden on the winds of the storm. This is a wild place, and wild things happen here. It calls to me. I feel stronger here, more focused, more daring. You'd be surprised what I dare, lover."

Michel nodded, but said nothing. He'd always suspected Lily had a touch of esp, but it wasn't something you mentioned among the aristocracy. Espers were property. Always. Apparently, the boredom of enforced celibacy and the untamed nature of the planet had combined to stimulate her abilities. Certainly, she'd seemed more extreme lately in her emotions and her recklessness.

"All right," he said mildly. "So you've got a great future ahead of you as a weather predictor. So what? How does that help us?"

"The wildness of this planet doesn't lie in its weather, but in its people," said Lily. "I can feel them out there. Underground. They're planning something big, something we can perhaps take advantage of. You see, I have friends here, dear Michel. Good friends. Powerful friends."

And then they both heard footsteps approaching down the corridor outside, and they broke off, moving away from each other. There was a pause, and then Toby Shreck came bustling through the doorway, smiling professionally, followed more casually by his cameraman Flynn. Michel and Lily drew themselves up majestically.

"Get out," said Lily.

"Sorry to bother you," said Toby breezily, "but I need to tape a quick interview with you two. Nothing too complicated or challenging; just a simple character piece for inclusion in the documentary your Family's commissioned from me on the opening ceremony. So if you'll just grant me a few minutes of your time…"

"Get out," said Michel.

"Allow me to point out that your respective spouses are very keen that you should cooperate," said Toby. "Trust me, just lie back and relax, and it'll be over before you know it."

"Get out," said Lily.

"Honestly," said Toby, smiling till his cheeks ached, "you'll enjoy it, once we get started. Haven't you ever wanted to have your face on the holoscreen, broadcast across the entire Empire, in front of a guaranteed audience of practically everyone with a set? The stardrive ceremony is big news. There's bound to be a massive audience. Your names could be on everybody's lips." He looked hopefully at Lily and Michel, and then sighed and shrugged. "I know; get out. Come on, Flynn. We'll try again some other time when they're not feeling so aristocratic."

He bowed briefly to Lily and Michel and left, followed by Flynn, who didn't bow to anyone. Michel relaxed a little as the door closed behind them. Lily scowled.

"Impertinent little creep. Speaking to us like that. I can just imagine the sort of questions he had in mind. Publicity like that we don't need. Not with what I've got planned."

"Well, what precisely have you got planned?" said Michel impatiently. "And who the hell are these friends of yours? Why haven't you mentioned them before? Have you told them about us?"

"I didn't have to," said Lily. "They already knew. That's why they came to me."

"Who the hell are they?"

"Clan Chojiro. I've been one of their agents for ages now. They respect my witchy nature, and they pay very well. They had a great many agents in place here already, but through me they now have access to all kinds of levels they couldn't even touch before. They're quite willing to see we get everything we want, as long as they get what they want. They even have agents among the local rebels, feeding them information. Honestly, things couldn't be working out better for us. Could they?"

"I don't know," said Michel. "Conspiring with Clan Chojiro is like shark fishing and using yourself as bait. I need time to think about this."

"Well, think quickly. Someone will be coming here to talk to us any minute. Our plans can begin anytime now. The last piece of the puzzle has just arrived."

"I hate it when you go all allusive. I assume we're talking about a double agent. What makes him so special?"

"He's a Jesuit commando," said a calm voice behind them. "Which means he has access to all the security systems in and around the factory complex."

Michel spun around, fists clenched at being caught unawares, and then he quickly unclenched them as he remembered who he was facing. The Jesuits were the enforcers of the Church of Christ the Warrior and were said to be the best fighters you could find outside the Investigators or the Arena. This particular Jesuit was wearing purple and white battle armor and a sardonic smile. He was tall, dark, and not particularly memorable. He didn't look especially tough, either, but Michel had absolutely no intention of testing him. Or even upsetting him. Michel's muscles were strictly for show.

"So glad you could come and see us," Lily said graciously to the Jesuit. "I take it everything is going as planned?"

"So far," said the Jesuit. "I am Father Brendan, Michel. You may have complete confidence in me. In this room, for example, the security systems are currently running on a closed loop, so we can talk for as long as we need without fear of being overheard. Now, I'm sure you have questions. Ask away."

"All right," said Michel. "Let's start with why we should trust anyone from the Church. Last I heard, they were still advocating the return of the death penalty for adulterers. This could all be a setup by Kassar. He'd love to have something he could use to bring down the Wolfes."

"The Cardinal knows nothing about this," said Brendan, or we'd all be dead by now. As to why I've chosen to work with Clan Chojiro, it's really very simple. Before I joined the Church, I was originally Clan Silvestri."

"What the hell do Chojiro and Silvestri have in common?"

The Jesuit smiled. "Blue Block."

Michel realized his mouth was hanging open and closed it with a snap. Blue Block. The extremely secret, half-mythical school where younger members of the Families were trained and conditioned almost from birth to be utterly loyal to the Clans, to death and beyond. The Families' secret weapon.

"But…" Michel struggled for words. "Why is Blue Block being used against the Wolfes, one of their own?"

Brendan smiled. "The Wolfes in general—and Valentine in particular—are becoming too powerful. He's tipping the balance. We feel it would be best for all if Valentine could be made to stand down, and others more willing to share the profits of stardrive production took over."

"Which is where we come in," said Lily. "Daniel and Stephanie will fall easily without Valentine to protect and support them, Constance will be quietly sidelined, and we will take over the Family. Clan Chojiro will support us now in return for future generosity on our part."

"Quite," said Brendan. "You don't have to do anything much to begin with. We'll supply explosives and provide exact locations where they'll do the most damage. All you have to do is place them in those areas of the complex that only you have access to. It won't be a particularly big explosion. Just enough to throw production into chaos and make Clan Wolfe look incompetent."

"So no one has to get killed?" Michel said quickly.

"Only as a last resort," said Brendan. "We prefer to avoid actual bloodshed. It's so… obvious. Trust me, Michel, we'll try everything else first."

Michel nodded reluctantly. "All right. When does the balloon go up?"

"At the ceremony," said the Jesuit. "Live, on holoscreens all over the Empire. It'll be a ratings smash."

"You see, lover," said Lily to Michel, slipping an arm through his. "Even that little toad of a reporter will end up helping us. Everything is planned, down to the last detail. Nothing can go wrong."

Toby Shreck hurried down the narrow corridor, glanced at the watch face set into his wrist, and swore quietly. This was officially sleep time in the factory complex's living quarters, and after the day he'd been through he felt he could sleep for a week. In the hours since his unsuccessful little chat with Lily and Michel Wolfe, he'd been running himself ragged trying to set up all the interviews and factory footage he could.

No one was cooperating except under the direst of threats, and trying to make this factory look good was a task that even an experienced PR flack like himself would have blanched at. Personally speaking, Toby felt he'd seen sexier-looking abattoirs. But none of that mattered now. He had a chance at a once-in-a-lifetime interview, and he was damned if he was going to lose it now, just because it was an hour when all civilized men had their heads down and were dreaming furiously. Everyone else could give him cold shoulders till their joints froze up; this one interview would make his reputation.

He tried to hurry himself a little faster, but he was already out of breath. Too much weight. Too many good lunches at PR events and launches. As a result, he was built for comfort rather than speed. All right, he was fat. For once, it didn't matter. No one would be looking at him in this interview. He forced himself on, puffing hard. Trust Flynn to have his quarters halfway across the complex. Actually, that wasn't really fair. Toby had quarters in the better area because he was, after all, an aristocrat, and Flynn very definitely wasn't. Toby sniffed. He didn't feel like being fair. He finally stumbled to a halt before the right door, leaned on it a moment while he got his breath back, and then hammered on the door with his fist.

"Go away," said Flynn's calm voice. "I am resting. If you're factory personnel, go to hell. If you're Toby the Troubador, go to hell by the express route. If you're a Wolfe, this is a recording. If you're a potential lover, leave your name and location on my computer file. Full image, please. Clothes optional."

"Open up, damn it," said Toby. "You wouldn't believe who's agreed to talk to us."