Frost and wished he hadn't. The Investigator was staring at the alien hungrily, only a moment away from attacking the thing on general principles. Silence considered the matter, then reached out and pulled Frost back a step. The alien was the Empress's pet, and if by some miracle Frost actually did manage to kill the bloody thing, Lionstone would not be at all happy. Frost pulled her arm free immediately and glared at him, but stayed where she was. Silence decided to start his report before something unpleasant happened.
He kept it simple and succinct, but hit all the salient points. There was a lot of uneasy murmuring from the assembled Court as he described what he'd found in the wrecked Base on Gehenna. He told how the
'Perhaps now you appreciate our position on the necessity for increased military spending. If one alien ship can do so much, what might a fleet accomplish? We have heard whispers of late of a proposed revolt against the new tax increases; let us make it clear that any such treachery will be put down harshly, with every resource at our disposal. In the current circumstances, refusal to support the military can only be seen as treason against humanity.' General Beckett smiled, Cardinal Kassar did not. The Empress looked at Stelmach. 'Do you have anything to add at this time?'
Stelmach swallowed hard, shook his head quickly, and finally managed a very quiet, 'Not at this time, Your Majesty, no.'
'Very well,' said the Empress. 'Guards, bring the prisoner forward.'
The middle of the crowd quickly parted to form a narrow aisle through which two armed guards half led and half dragged a naked man through the deep snow. He wore only wrist and ankle chains, and some blood that had spattered down onto his chest from his recently broken nose. His skin was a bluish-white, and he shuddered uncontrollably in the biting cold. The guards threw him on his knees before the Iron Throne. He looked up at Lionstone pleadingly and tried to say something, but he was shaking so much he couldn't get the words out. Lionstone looked down at him thoughtfully.
'This pathetic object is Fredric Hill. Head of starport security here on Golgotha. We gave him the appointment ourselves. We thought he showed promise. This man let the rebels in, allowed them to sabotage the Tax and Tithe Headquarters, and failed to prevent them from lowering the planet's defenses as they escaped. He also failed to protect us from the alien ship. We could question him on this, but what's the point? He'd just nod and smile and agree with everything I said, and then try to pass the blame onto his staff, or hidden traitors, or lack of the right equipment. Anything but himself. After all, he'd say, the rebels arrived in a Hadenman ship. Probably half his people took one look at the great golden ship of awful legend and ran for their lives. And the other half probably followed them, once the alien ship swept past our nonexistent defenses to strafe the city.
'It doesn't make any difference. He was head of starport security, responsible for our defense. A strong man in that position might have accomplished much. He might have pulled enough of his people together to organize equipment repairs, bring secondary and backup systems on-line, send out rescue teams to aid the wounded and distressed in the city. Instead, according to his own security records, he dithered and fumbled and finally hid, reemerging only when it was all safely over. Quite unacceptable behavior from one of our officers. We have therefore decided that an example shall be made.'
She looked back at the Grendel alien, and after a moment everyone else did, too. It stood calm and relaxed behind the Throne, a living nightmare in spiked crimson silicon armor. The yoke around its armored neck made a sudden polite chiming noise, and then the alien surged forward so quickly the human eye couldn't follow it. One moment it was standing just behind the Throne, and the next it was towering over the cringing security head, its great clawed hands on his bare shoulders. The courtiers nearest it surged back as far as the pressure of the crowd would allow, but the Grendel paid them no heed. Its claws sank deep into the man's flesh, and thick runnels of blood coursed down his colorless flesh. He opened his mouth to scream, and the alien opened its mouth and bit the man's face off. Skin and eyes and nose and mouth disappeared as the alien jerked back its great head, leaving only a shattered bloody skull, screaming horribly with the security man's voice.
The alien chewed and swallowed and then leaned forward again, thrusting its grinning jaws into the man's chest with brutal force. The sternum stove in, cracking like paper, and the Grendel alien's head burrowed in the man's chest, going after the heart like a pig hunting truffles. The man's arms waved wildly for a few moments, and then they fell to his sides and lay still. And Fredric Hill, once head of starport security, hung limply in the alien's grasp as it chewed thoughtfully, savoring the flavor. The yoke around its neck chimed, but the Grendel didn't respond. The yoke chimed again, and the Grendel dropped the body carelessly into the blood-soaked snow and moved unhurriedly back to resume its position just behind the Iron Throne. Steaming hot blood dripped thickly from its grinning jaws and ran slowly down its gleaming silicon armor. In the snow before the Throne, Hill's body lay in a crumpled heap, like a broken discarded toy that no one wanted to play with anymore.
Silence moved in close beside Frost. He could feel the anger boiling within her, ready to spill over at a moment's provocation. Her whole career had been built around killing aliens before they got the chance to kill people. He put a warning hand on her arm. It was as tense as coiled steel. She turned her head and gave him a hard look, and he took his hand away. Frost was an Investigator and had no time for human weaknesses like compassion. Her anger was purely professional.
The Court murmured among itself, looking from the Grendel to the gutted body and back again, impressed by the savagery of the kill, if not the quality of the control the Empress had over it. The many lessons involved in the man's death had not been missed by any of the courtiers. Silence shared a significant glance with Stelmach, but they both kept their peace. Those courtiers nearest the body looked down at the open wounds steaming in the chill air and tried to back away a little farther. But the crowd was packed in tight behind them, and there was nowhere for them to go. Nobody wanted to look at the alien. The Empress smiled at them all.
'Cute, isn't he? Table manners aren't up to much, but he's only young. Really little more than a baby. Imagine what he'll be like when he comes of age. Imagine an army of him, spilling across a battlefield like an endless wave of slaughter. Unstoppable shock troops, leaving nothing behind them but mountains of dead and oceans of blood. I'm quite looking forward to it. The work into controlling the Grendel aliens more perfectly is going well. Soon we'll have yokes for every Sleeper in the vaults, and then we'll send them out against the aliens who attacked us here today. Or anyone else who threatens us. Captain Silence, you haven't finished your report. Tell the Court what you discovered on the Wolfling World.'
Silence, Frost, and Stelmach took it in turns to tell what they'd found in the vast caverns deep beneath the frozen surface of the Wolfling World, once also known as Haden, home to the augmented supermen, the Hadenmen. They told of the thousands of sleeping Hadenmen, who rose from their long death-like sleep and walked out of their Tomb, glorious and powerful, an army of cyborg warriors who once tried to overthrow humanity and only narrowly failed.
They told of the rebels who woke them: the outlaw, Owen Deathstalker, the pirate Hazel d'Ark, the bounty hunter Ruby Journey, and the legendary professional rebel Jack Random. They told of the defeat of the
The Court continued to murmur among itself, despite darting glares from the Empress, as the courtiers reacted to names like Jack Random and the original Deathstalker. They were also troubled by the reemergence of Owen Deathstalker, outlawed by the Empress for no good reason, who had evaded all her armies and now looked to be leading the new rebellion. And they really didn't like the idea of a new army of Hadenmen massing to attack the Empire again. The only reason the Hadenmen weren't still officially listed as the Enemies of Humanity was because the rogue AIs of Shub were even nastier. The Empress finally sat back and let them mutter for a while before reclaiming their attention with her amplified voice.
'Let's not all panic just yet, boys and girls. The Hadenmen are a long way away and only newly awakened; it will be some time yet before they're in any position to pose a real threat to us. The man claiming to be Jack Random could be nothing more than a double; rebel propaganda to draw people to their cause. The man himself is