everyone. Captain out.'
He looked around him and clapped his hands briskly. 'All right, that's it. Clear the bridge. Everyone out.'
His people rose quickly to their feet and left the bridge with a professional minimum of fuss. Investigator Frost turned to go, and then stopped as she realized Silence wasn't moving.
'Aren't you coming. Captain?'
'No, Investigator. This Captain is going down with his ship. The main bulk of the
'You are more important,' said Frost calmly. 'The Empire has a great deal of time and money invested in you, Captain. The colonists are just peasants. They don't matter.'
'They matter to me. Clear the bridge, Investigator. There's nothing you can say that will persuade me to leave.'
'No,' said Frost. 'I don't suppose there is.'
She hit him once, efficiently, and he slumped forward in his command chair, unconscious. Frost checked the pulse in his neck, nodded once, and then picked the Captain up and slung him almost effortlessly over one shoulder.
'Odin, this is Investigator Frost. Acknowledge.'
'Acknowledged, Investigator.'
'The Captain is indisposed. I am placing you in command. You will do everything in your power to guide the ship down, so that its eventual impact does the minimum possible damage to inhabited areas. You understand I cannot take the risk of downloading you and taking you with us. There is no telling how much damage the infecting virus has done to your systems, or how infectious it remains.'
'Yes, Investigator. I understand.'
Frost looked once around the empty bridge. 'Goodbye, Odin.'
'Goodbye, Investigator. Safe journey.'
Frost turned and left the bridge with the Captain still unconscious over her shoulder. The empty bridge was filled with the low sound of the AI singing quietly to itself and the pirate ship growing ever larger on the viewscreen.
The
CHAPTER TWO
The Man Who Had Everything
The Deathstalker, Owen, Lord of Vuimonde, last of a famous warrior line, lay naked and exhausted among the crumpled silk sheets of his bed and wondered lazily if he could work up the strength to call for a tall iced drink. It was late in the morning of another perfect day on the best of all possible worlds. The sun was shining, what passed for birds on Virimonde were singing their little hearts out, everyone was busy at their work, and he didn't have to leave his bed for ages yet if he didn't feel like it. He sighed and stretched slowly and smiled the slow smug smile of the truly satisfied. He'd just had amazing sex with his long-term mistress, and when she got back from wherever she'd disappeared to, he fully intended to do it all again. Practice makes perfect.
She wasn't really his mistress, in the sense that he didn't pay her a retainer or anything, but he liked the ancient word, with its undertones of sin and debauchery. He stretched again unhurriedly, content as a cat in the sun, staring up at the ceiling high above. When he did finally choose to get up, his most recent history was waiting in the computers for him to take up work on it again. It was a good piece, sharp and pointed and full of new insights. The kind of work he'd always known he was capable of, if he could just get away from interfering distractions like having to train with sword and gun every morning and study military tactics every afternoon in order to be the warrior his line demanded of him. No one had ever asked him if he wanted to be another bloody fighter like all this revered ancestors. But that was all behind him now. His father was dead, he'd inherited the title, and his life was his own at last. In short, he'd got it all. No doubt eventually he'd start getting bored with such perfection in several years or so, but until then he was determined to enjoy every minute of it. And why not? He was a nice guy; he deserved it.
He looked around the huge stone chamber with its hanging tapestries and centuries-old holos. The Deathstalker Standing hadn't changed outwardly in generations. Every modern convenience was in place, ready to hand or call, but expertly concealed behind the traditional overlay. The Standing had been the home of the Deathstalker Clan for generations beyond counting, serving all their various needs with calm efficiency. When Owen had bought the Lordship of Virimonde, he'd had the entire castle dismantled, stone by stone, and had it and its contents shipped to Virimonde, where it was reassembled surprisingly quickly by a small army of fanatical experts. You can do things like that when you're a Lord. The Standing was his, wherever he decided to plant his roots; all that was required of him was that he preserve it and hold it in trust for future generations. Assuming he ever got around to marrying and producing a next generation. His mistress was a delightful sort, but not at all the kind of person one married. As head of one of the oldest Families in the Empire, he had a duty to marry someone of his own rank and station. And he would. Eventually.
Owen looked thoughtfully at the giant holo on the wall opposite his bed, showing the original Deathstalker in all his fearsome aspect and martial glory: Warrior Prime of the Empire and founder of the Clan that still bore his name. He looked a bit rough and ready in his thick furs and steelmesh tunic, bristling with weapons, his head shaved in a mercenary's scalplock, but it didn't take too much imagination to transform his warrior's arrogance into a lord's nobility. According to Family history, he'd been the greatest fighting man of his day, unanimously elected Warrior Prime and elevated to the Peerage by popular acclaim. Hard man by all accounts, and a bit of a bastard, but the public liked that in their heroes. Bloodied his sword on a hundred worlds, and never backed away from an insult or a war.
He was also the creator and wielder of the Darkvoid Device, which put out a thousand suns in a moment and left their planets to sail silently through an endless night. The Dark void. But no one talks about that anymore outside the Family.
Pity about what happened to him in the end, but that's politics for you. His son had taken over as Warrior Prime to the Empire, and things went on as they should. Owen wondered vaguely what the old man would have made of his most recent descendant. Probably would have had him put down the moment he showed any sign of intellectual tendencies. Owen couldn't bring himself to really give a damn. He'd always known he was a writer, not a fighter. He'd had a proper training in weaponry and all the martial arts, as befitted his station and inheritance, but it had never interested him. His interest lay in researching and piecing together the Empire's somewhat tangled history. Nothing excited him like reaching into the morass of legend and myth that made up so much of the past and producing one indisputable new fact, clear and sharp as a diamond in a coal mine. And if he'd learned one thing from all the histories he'd read and the tales he'd investigated, it was that most of the time there was no glory and damn all honor to be found on the battlefield. Only blood and mud and the endless bitterness of lost hopes.
Most wars turned out to be squalid little affairs, once you dug through the lies and propaganda, fought to protect trade interests or save political face. Owen was damned if he'd fight and die just so someone else could look good. Particularly when he had so much to live for. The only real legacy he had from his bad old, mad old ancestor was the Deathstalker ring; an ugly chunky circle of black gold handed down out of the unimaginable past, the sign and seal of Deathstalker authority. According to the Family tradition, he was forbidden to remove it, save to pass it on to his eldest son. They'd had to cut off his father's finger to get it after he was dead. But then, Owen and his father had never got on.
They'd always been surprisingly distant and distinct, considering how alike they looked. They were both tall and rangy, with dark hair and darker eyes, moving always with the quiet grace of breeding and long martial training.
