Green, Simon R - Deathstalker 02 by Deathstalker Rebellion

Author:Deathstalker Rebellion
Language: eng
Format: epub

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

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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

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