Deathstalker

too big, too vast for the human mind to comfortably encompass. Silence went up to it. Frost at his side. He reached out to touch the gleaming steel, and then hesitated at the last moment. It was as though there was a cold wind blowing constantly from the wall. He could feel it as a gentle pressure on his face. His reflection in the steel looked vague, distorted, like a ghost of himself, a premonition come back to warn him.

'Set up the force shield,' he said harshly, turning away from the wall. 'Once we've opened this thing up, I don't want anything getting past us and out into the city.'

The marines came forward and bustled around setting up the force field generator, glad to be doing something they understood. It wasn't much of a generator, put together from parts they'd been carrying in their backpacks, but it would produce a force screen big enough to cover any hole they could hope to make in the Vault wall. The last marine finished his task with a little flourish and pressed the activating stud. A glowing force wall appeared, sealing off the team and their part of the wall from the rest of the city. They just had time to relax a little and look at each other confidently, and then the generator shorted out and the force field collapsed. Smoke curled up from the generator, and a few of the braver marines batted it aside with their hands as they looked the generator over, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Frost looked at Silence.

'Great start.'

'Can you fix it?' Silence said to the marines.

'Doesn't actually appear to be anything wrong with it,' came back a quiet, tentative voice. 'I think it's just being too close to the Vault that did it. All my instruments are going crazy. The readings don't make any sense at all. But you can forget about the force shield. There's no way we can hope to fix this down here.'

'How about the tangle field? That uses a lot less energy.'

The marines stepped suddenly back from the generator. The solid frame was melting, running away in long shallow streams of plasteel. Silence looked at it numbly. That stuff had a melting point in the thousands. Any heat strong enough to melt the plasteel should have been more than enough to reduce the entire team surrounding it to ashes. Frost stepped forward and prodded one of the melting streams with the tip of her sword. The steel tip steamed, but seemed unharmed. The Investigator pulled back the sword and sniffed the point tentatively.

'Interesting,' she said finally.

Anything else you'd like to add?' said Silence after a moment.

'Not right now,' said Frost. 'I'm going to have to think about this.' She moved away, frowning thoughtfully.

'You do that,' said Silence. He looked back at the marines. 'Set up the disrupter cannon. Make sure you've got a good field of fire for the guns. Now it's more important than ever that nothing gets past us.'

The marines set to work again, assembling the cannon from their packs. Stelmach moved in beside Steel.

'Do you really think they're going to work any better than the generator?'

Silence shrugged. 'Damned if I know. But they'd better, or we've come all this way for nothing. According to the first team's record, it's going to take both of those cannon to make a hole in that wall.'

'We don't know why some things work and some don't,' said Frost, moving back to rejoin them. 'We could lose anything at any time. Our guns, our lights…'

Stelmach shuddered suddenly. 'Imagine being trapped down here in the dark.'

Frost shrugged. 'Wouldn't bother me.'

'No,' thought Silence, I don't suppose it would, at that. But even an Investigator needs to breathe. 'Let's not panic ourselves, people. The first team had their difficulties, but it wasn't failing tech that killed them. The Sleepers did that. At least we've got the battle espers and the Wampyr, both of whose strengths are non-tech in origin. Speaking of which; espers, get over here.'

They drifted over to stand before him, dull-eyed and listless. Silence looked at them sternly. 'I'm turning off the esp-blockers. You're no use to me as you are now. Shield yourselves as best you can, but when we open up that wall, I want everything you've got trained on whatever comes out. Got it?'

The espers stared at him like children awaiting punishment. One of them looked at him with something like anger in his eyes.

'You should never have brought us here, Captain. We don't belong here, any of us. It's not a human place, with human limitations. There are things out there in the darkness that we dare not look at. If you expose us to them, we'll die.'

'If you don't stop whining and get your act together, I'll kill you,' snapped Silence. 'You're battle espers, dammit. You're supposed to have been trained to handle things like this. Now brace yourselves.'

He gestured to the marines to turn off the esp-blockers, and for a second nothing happened. And then the esper who'd spoken took a deep breath and stepped back a pace, and his head exploded. Silence cried out in disgust and shock as blood and brains spattered his uniform. Another esper began talking swiftly and urgently in a language no one recognized. The remaining espers huddled together as though for comfort, eyes closed, concentrating all the power of their unusual minds to protect themselves. Silence felt something like guilt stirring within him, but pushed it aside. He didn't have time.

'Are you stable now? Can we proceed with the mission?'

The espers nodded slowly in unison. One of them glared at Silence. 'Do it. Do it while you still can. It knows we're here.'

Silence turned to the marines manning the two disrupter cannon. The gleaming solidity and power of the guns reassured him. There was enough power there to blast a hole through a starship's hull.

'Everyone stand clear. On my order, fire both cannon. New!'

The two guns fired as one, the brilliant energy beams almost blinding in the gloom. Crackling energy played across the steel wall of the Vault without damaging it. And then slowly a door opened in the wall, twenty feet high and a dozen wide, swinging reluctantly back as though the sheer pressure of the guns had forced it to reveal itself. The energy beams snapped off, and everyone stared breathlessly at the darkness beyond the door, now half ajar.

Silence's hand tightened round his gun till his knuckles ached, bracing himself for a flood of ravening alien life, but there was nothing, nothing at all. It was very quiet now that the cannon had stopped firing. The only sound was the massed breathing of the expectant contact team. And then a single alien leapt out of the doorway, and blood flew on the air as it tore into the team with an insane fury.

It was huge and awful, but all Silence got was an impression of glistening scarlet armor and jagged steel teeth. It moved among them, fast as thought, ripping and tearing a path through the marines with its teeth and claws, picking marines up and throwing them away as though they were nothing. Everyone was firing their guns, but the alien was never where they aimed. It was huge and fast and deadly and it seemed to be everywhere at once. Disrupter beams blazed across the narrow space, cutting down two marines and one of the Wampyr. And then the battle espers hit the creature with a wave of psychokinetic force, holding it in place through the sheer power of their minds. It looked like a nightmare in spiked bloodred armor, vaguely humanoid in form, its heart- shaped head lacking anything like a human lace or expression.

For a moment everyone was still, and then the Wampyr swarmed over the alien, trying to pull it down with their superior strength, but already the hold of the espers was weakening. Without the esp-blockers to protect them, the city was just too much to bear. The alien turned its inhuman head, and beams of crackling energy burst from its mouth and eyes, blowing people apart in sudden bloody explosions. It gestured sharply, and new spikes thrust out of its armor, transfixing the gripping Wampyr. Black blood spurted from their mouths, but they didn't scream and they wouldn't release their holds. Shrapnel exploded from the bloodred armor, blowing some of the Wampyr away like bloody pincushions.

'Mindburn the thing!' yelled Silence, but the espers couldn't hear him. Blood was running from their noses and ears and eyes, trickling down their straining faces like crimson tears, and their hold on the alien suddenly vanished. It shook off the remaining Wampyr as though they were nothing. Frost stepped forward, took careful aim with her disrupter, and shot the creature in the head at point-blank range. The energy beam ricocheted from the scarlet armor and glanced off into the darkness, leaving the alien untouched. It took the last surviving Wampyr in both hands, ripped off its head and threw it away, and chewed at the bloody neck like a child with a treat. And then it turned and looked at Silence and Frost standing together and smiled a bloody smile, like a demon from some cybernetic hell.

Silence glanced quickly about him. All the Wampyr were dead, and Stelmach looked to be in shock. Only two