Deathstalker War (46 page)

“Now we’re all here, I will proceed with the final briefing. You should all have been studying your general orders and objectives on the way here, but this is where you get the big picture. Virimonde is to be taken back under direct Imperial rule from Golgotha, by any and all means necessary. The local populace has been practicing forbidden forms of democracy, making their own policy, deciding their own lives and defying standard Imperial edicts. According to the Steward of the Deathstalker Standing, Virimonde’s Lord, David Deathstalker, has proven a weak and ineffectual leader, disregarding his duties and offices, not only failing to stamp out this treason but actually encouraging it. He is declared a traitor, and his Lordship revoked. He is to be removed from office, and along with his companion, the Lord Kit SummerIsle, they are to be brought back to Golgotha to stand trial.

“We expect there to be resistance. The Deathstalker and the SummerIsle are both warriors of some note, and we have reason to believe there has been considerable infiltration of the local populace by rebel agents. The entire population of Virimonde is, therefore, to be pacified and brought under direct Imperial control, by any and all means necessary. There’s no way of telling how prepared and armed the populace is, but we must work on the assumption of a worst-case scenario. No chances are to be taken, no quarter offered. This is to be a punitive mission, an example to others. A high death rate is to be expected.

“The Lord Wolfe is in charge of the Imperial war machines, assisted by Professor Wax of Golgotha University. The Professor cannot be with us right now; apparently he doesn’t travel well. We can only hope his condition improves once we get him dirtside. The Lord Dram is in charge of the ground troops. A full army of marines and troopers who will take out the population centers and ready them for occupation by further troops. Captain, Investigator, Security Officer, you are personally responsible for capturing the Deathstalker and the SummerIsle, and bringing them back alive, if at all possible. Her Majesty has set her heart on putting them on trial. I will liaise among the three operations, coordinating your efforts. Lord Wolfe, you are to concentrate on the urban areas. Lord Dram, you will deal with the more scattered rural communities. Let’s all try very hard not to trip over each other. I want this done by the numbers, calmly and efficiently, and with the minimum necessary bloodshed. This is a punitive mission, but let us not forget that dead peasants can’t work. Now, let us discuss the logistics.”

The meeting dragged on for some time, as details were made clear, problems raised, and new solutions hammered out. Valentine surprized everyone with his keen grasp of the subject, while Dram seemed surprisingly reticent. Silence and Frost studied the most recent reports on the Deathstalker and the SummerIsle, and their latest known haunts. Stelmach remained silent and just nodded in the right places.

As a major food-production world, Virimonde was too valuable to be scorched, but its people could still be punished. The peasants must know their place, and what would happen to any who tried to rise above it. The wild card in all this was Valentine with his war machines. This would be the first time they had ever been used in a major operation. The Empress had always been intrigued by the potential of war machines, and they’d performed well in practice, but only a few had ever been tried and tested in the fires of battle. Virimonde would change that. And how well they did would decide Valentine’s future in the Court and in the Empire.

Eventually the last compromise was agreed on, the last detail ironed out, and they had a war plan everyone could live with. Beckett gave them as brief a pep talk as he could get away with, they all said God bless the Empress in a loud voice, and the meeting broke up. They all bowed more or less respectfully to each other, smiled meaningless smiles, and went their separate ways. Dram back to his troops, Valentine back to his machines, and Silence, Frost, and Stelmach back to their quarters. Silence and Frost were scowling heavily, and Stelmach’s stomach hurt. They had no illusions about their particular mission. The Deathstalker and Kid Death were known to be two of the deadliest fighters in the Empire, and overcoming them wasn’t going to be easy, never mind bringing them back alive to stand trial. But the three of them had developed a reputation for bringing off the impossible, so they were volunteered for the job. Their reward, should they survive, would be the return of the
Dauntless
from the Rim and reinstatement in the Empress’s good graces.

“If it wasn’t for my crew, I’d tell the Iron Bitch to go to hell,” said Silence, not caring whether the ship’s Security was listening. “I don’t do suicide missions. To the best of my knowledge, neither the Deathstalker nor Kid Death has ever been defeated in combat. Hell, they took on all comers in the Arenas, until no one would face them anymore.”

“They never met us before,” said Frost. “We can take them, Captain. Assuming we can locate them before the invasion proper begins, and everything goes to hell in a handcart.”

“I wish I shared your confidence,” said Stelmach. “I don’t even know why the Empress wanted me here.”

“You’re our lucky charm,” said Silence. “Just stay back out of the way, and we’ll do all the work.”

“Gladly,” said Stelmach. He hoped they couldn’t tell that he was lying. He knew exactly why the Empress wanted him on Virimonde. For some time now, Silence and Frost had been displaying near superhuman qualities in their missions. They were faster, stronger, and more capable than they had any right to be. Ever since their encounter with the enigmatic alien device known as the Madness Maze on lost Haden, they had demonstrated powers and abilities that bordered on the miraculous. Not to mention psionic. The Empress had no intention of letting rogue espers of such potential run around loose, so this mission, with its many obvious dangers, had been arranged for Silence and Frost, specifically to bring out their powers. And Stelmach would be right there to study and report on them.

He’d been sworn to silence, on fear of his life, and it was tearing Stelmach apart. He thought of Silence and even Frost as his friends, but he couldn’t defy orders that came directly from the Iron Throne. So he kept his mouth shut, fretted till his stomach cramped, and tried constantly to discover some way out of his predicament that wouldn’t get him killed either by the Empress or his friends. If they had powers, and Stelmach wasn’t even convinced that they had, they must have some good reason for keeping it quiet. Stelmach just hoped that when he finally found out what it was, it would be something he’d be able to include in his report. In the meantime, he worried a lot, and jumped whenever Silence or Frost spoke to him.

“What have we sunk to?” Silence said disgustedly. “Paid assassins, in all but name. All that nonsense about bringing them in alive to stand trial was just a smoke screen. They know we’ll never be able to defeat them without killing them. We’re supposed to kill them to save the embarrassment of bringing two Lords and heads of their respective Families to trial.”

“It’s our only way of getting our ship back from the Rim,” said Frost. “If the price for that is the death of two strangers, I have no problem with that. I’ve killed before on the Empress’s orders, alien and human, and no doubt will again. It’s part of the job.”

“It was never part of my job,” said Silence flatly. “I didn’t join the Fleet to kill people for political reasons.”

“Then you were remarkably naive, Captain,” said Frost. “In essence, that’s always been our final duty. To fight and kill those the Empress has declared enemies of the Empire.”

“We should be fighting the real enemies,” said Silence. “The Deathstalker and the SummerIsle are just a couple of kids with too much time on their hands. Probably never had a political thought in their lives. The Empire’s real enemies are the rebel underground. Owen Deathstalker and his people. Lionstone doesn’t take them seriously enough. You saw what happened on the Wolfling World. What Owen and his people have become. I don’t even know if they’re still human anymore. They’re the real danger. And that’s the only reason I’m doing this. Because we need to be back in a position to protect the Empress from the coming rebellion. She needs us, whether she wants to admit it or not.”

“You don’t like the Empress,” said Stelmach.

“Hell, no one likes the Empress,” said Frost. “At best, she’s an amiable psychopath. But she’s the Empress. I took an oath upon my blood and my honor to serve and protect her all my days. Right, Captain?”

“Right,” said Silence. “She might be a psychopath, but she’s our psychopath. Our Empress. Besides, she can’t live forever, and when she’s gone the Empire will still be here, if we’ve done our job right. In the end, we’re loyal to the Throne, irrespective of who sits on it. We preserve the Empire, for all its faults, because all the alternatives are worse. Without the central control of homeworld to keep things running, it would be only too easy for everything to fall apart, and all the worlds slide back into barbarism and mass starvation. And let’s not forget the various alien threats out there. We have to be strong and organized, to be able to stand against them when they come. We can’t afford luxuries like dissent anymore. Right, Stelmach?”

“What? Oh, yes; right. We have to be loyal. Whatever it costs us.”

Valentine Wolfe returned to his quarters alone. They were bare, stark, and characterless, which suited Valentine just fine. At any given time, what was going on inside his head was much more interesting than anything in the outside world. For the moment he had a pleasant buzz going, but nothing more. He had some thinking to do. He sat down in his favorite lounger, and turned on the massage program. He thought best when his body was well taken care of. He pulled one of the thick pulpy petals from his long-stemmed rose, popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. He and his Family were in deep trouble, and as always it was up to him to dig them out Clan Wolfe had lost the new stardrive contract when they lost their stardrive factory to the rebels on Technos III, but Valentine still had his secret contacts with the rogue AIs on Shub. And the unparalleled high tech they provided him had offered a way out of his dilemma. He presented some of it to Lionstone, as a gift to show his worth and loyalty, and then pointed out that his mastery of such tech made him the perfect choice to be in charge of the war machines in their first practical trials. And as simple as that, he was back in favor again.

Of course, his staying in favor depended on how well the machines performed on Virimonde, but he didn’t foresee any problems there. He smiled, and purple juice from the rose petal ran down his chin. He was sharp and bright and so in tune with himself he could feel his fingernails growing. Nothing could go wrong. He would succeed. It was his destiny. He was looking forward to seeing what his metal army would do to the poor peasants. There would be blood and fire and death and the destruction of cities, on a scale new even to him. He sighed deeply. Such fun.

Once he’d made a good showing here on Virimonde, Clan Wolfe would be placed in charge of war-machine production, and he could take his place at Lionstone’s side again. Where he belonged. He didn’t like being a lesser Lord. It offended his delicate sensibilities. And old enemies had been only too ready to crow at his fall from favor. In his apparent weakness they saw a chance for the settling of old scores. Preferably in blood. They were only waiting for him to fail on Virimonde, and then they would be circling him in Court like sharks drawn to the scent of blood in the water. Valentine sniffed. He would remember all their names when he came to power again.

Of course, there were other problems. Ever since the debacle on Technos III, his sister Stephanie and his brother Daniel had been missing. This was both good and bad news. Good, in the sense that they weren’t around to stick knives in his back anymore, and bad, in that he couldn’t be sure what they were up to now. Daniel had apparently gone off in search of their dead father, last seen as a computer-controlled corpse used as an emissary from the AIs of Shub. It seemed Daniel believed their father was still alive and wished to rescue him. Valentine hoped that Daniel was wrong. He didn’t want to have to kill his father again. And after the AIs had killed Daniel, perhaps they could be persuaded to return his body as a Ghost Warrior or a Fury. He’d make a useful ally at Court, without his mind to get in the way.

Stephanie, on the other hand, had disappeared without trace. No one seemed to know where she was, and Valentine found that disturbing. His sister wasn’t the sort to be quiet and reflective. Particularly after such a setback. She’d want revenge on someone. Wherever she was, Valentine had no doubt she was plotting trouble for him. It ran in the Family. Though rather slowly in her case. Stephanie didn’t have the patience for really intricate plots. For the moment, Valentine had agents out looking for her, with instructions to bring her back to him. Preferably in several small sacks.

The other fly in his ointment was Professor Ignatious Wax, cybernetics expert from the University of Golgotha. He’d been responsible for designing most of the war machines to be used on Virimonde, so Valentine had been forced to accept his assistance. Even though he knew the Professor was really only there to spy on him, to try and learn the source of the revolutionary new tech Valentine had provided. He posed no real threat. There was no way he’d be able to penetrate the mysteries of Shub technology. Even Valentine, with his chemically expanded mind, could do little more than operate the systems. Still, the man had proved to be very irritating, so Valentine had taken steps to ensure that the good Professor wouldn’t distract him while he was working down on Virimonde. Very . . . amusing steps. Valentine smiled happily. He would lead his machines to victory on Virimonde, falling upon cities and razing them to the ground, and Lionstone would love him again. And then let his enemies beware.

In his cabin, the man who wasn’t really the Lord High Dram paced up and down, scowling. This would be his first attempt at commanding troops in the field, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He’d studied up on it as best he could without raising suspicions, but no amount of theoretical knowledge could substitute for hands-on experience. The original Dram had led troops on many occasions, to great success, but the original Dram had been killed on Haden, also known as the Wolfline World. Now his clone had to carry on the role, lest anyone suspect the truth. He had to be Dram, do as he did. He was in charge of the pacification of the peasants, and Lionstone had made it very clear that he had to be successful, whatever the cost. Rather hard on the peasants, but it was their own fault for getting ideas above their station.