'But nothing's been decided about the last question!' Owen objected.
'I said, we're moving on,' said Gutman. 'As Speaker I am in charge of the agenda.'
'I told you,' said Owen, glaring about him. 'I warned you this would happen.'
'I could have you removed,' said Gutman.
'You could try,' said Owen.
'Please,' said Hazel.
'We will now move on to the next order of business,' said Gutman. 'General Beckett, officer in charge of the Imperial Fleet, is waiting most patiently to address us.'
A floating viewscreen appeared in midair almost immediately, as though it had just been waiting for its cue, and General Shaw Beckett scowled impartially out of the screen at one and all. His large, square head was set upon a pair of massive shoulders, though most of his intimidating bulk remained out of sight. His uniform was stretched tightly across his great frame, strewn with medals beyond counting. His wide mouth was set and stern, his dark eyes unwavering. As always, he was smoking a large cigar, and paused occasionally to blow smoke at the camera.
'About time you got around to me. Right, pay attention, and take notes if you have to, because I'm damned if I'm going through this again. Ever since the Fleet was blown apart during the rebellion by outlaw ships and those bloody Hadenmen vessels, we've been struggling to operate a bare skeleton service. Most of the starcruisers are gone, D and E class, and we're having to rely on destroyers and revamped frigates to carry a workload they were never intended to handle. We're short of crew too. There are plenty of volunteers, but it takes time to train real crewmen. Can't let just anyone loose on a starship.
'We're using the larger ships to protect food routes to the hardest-hit planets. There are lots of hungry people out there, but so far we've managed to avoid large areas of actual famine. Pirates have been a problem, attacking the convoys to sustain their black markets. We kill them as fast as we can catch them, but there are always more. What ships we have left over are on patrol, mostly out on the Rim, watching for the insect ships.'
His face disappeared from the screen, replaced by the familiar sight of an alien ship. It resembled a huge ball of sticky white webbing tangled together, tightly compacted. Weapons and force shields of unfamiliar design were there, unseen. One such ship had murdered every living soul in an isolated Imperial Base, and then almost destroyed Golgotha's main cities before Captain Silence and his crew destroyed it. No one knew where the alien ship had come from, or what they wanted. The only certainty about the aliens was their murderous intentions. The image of the ship disappeared, replaced by General Beckett again.
'Given the limited number of ships at my disposal, I cannot risk launching any kind of preemptive strike. All I can do is respond to alien attacks, drive the ships off, and then try to clean up the mess they've left behind. So far we've been lucky enough to avoid the major destruction and slaughter the first ship brought to Golgotha, but luck has a nasty habit of running out. The bottom line is, people are dying out here on the Rim, and there's damn all I can do about it! I must have more ships!'
'We're building them as fast as we can, General,' Gutman said sharply. 'But there are difficulties. There won't be any more E-class ships until we can establish a new stardrive factory to replace the one destroyed in the rebellion. And come up with something to replace the clones who previously performed the dangerous task of actually assembling the drive. And, of course, even D-class ships are horrendously expensive, at a time when every expense has to be weighed and justified. As long as the alien ships don't pose an immediate threat to the main Empire—'
'You'll sacrifice the people of the Rim planets to avoid having to raise taxes on everyone else.' Beckett snarled openly at the camera. 'Rulers come and rulers go, but nothing really changes. Look, the insects came to Golgotha once, and right now we don't have anything to stop them making a return visit. We still don't know where they came from; they just appear out of nowhere, make their attack, and then disappear again.'
'As long as we keep them from getting too annoyed with us, there's a real chance they will confine their attacks to the Rim,' said Gutman. 'A bleak philosophy, I'll admit, but in these desperate times we have no choice but to think in terms of the greatest good for the greatest number. We are not abandoning the Rim worlds. We authorize you to remain where you are, and give them all the protection you can. As soon as new ships are available, they will be sent to join you. But that's all I can offer you. Now, unless you have anything else to bring up—'
'As it happens, I do,' said Beckett. 'There's something… happening out here on the Rim. Disturbing reports have been coming in from all along the Rim, concerning the Darkvoid. There are reports of… things coming out of the darkness. Voices of the dead crying warnings. Visions of wonders and nightmares, fleeting contacts with things that come and go in a moment. Espers have had dreams of a door opening and closing, and something awful peering through. There've been too many reports, from normally trustworthy sources, for me to just dismiss them. I am forced to the only logical conclusion. There's something alive in the Darkvoid.'
For a long moment everyone was quiet. In the nine hundred and more years since the original Deathstalker used the Darkvoid Device, no one had really learned anything more about the vast area of utter night called the Darkvoid, save that ships which went into it rarely returned. Gutman turned to Owen and Hazel.
'Sir Deathstalker, you and Miss d'Ark were the last people to travel deep into the Darkvoid and return. Perhaps you could… shed a little light on this phenomenon?'
'This is all news to me,' said Owen. 'We never encountered anything like that. Just because my ancestor created the Darkvoid Device, it doesn't mean I'm any more of an expert than anyone else. If Giles kept any secrets about the Darkvoid, he never passed them on to me. But I really don't see how anyone or anything could be alive in there. There's nothing left in the Darkvoid to support life. No light, no heat, nothing to feed on… how could anything exist there?'
'Not life as we know it,' said Beckett from the viewscreen. 'But who knows what nightmares might be lurking in the darkness, birthed in that moment of mass slaughter and utter horror?'
'That's ridiculous!' said Owen.
'Is it?' said Beckett. 'When you went into the Darkvoid, you came back with the revived Hadenmen, an old horror we thought we were well rid of. There could be anything in that darkness. Anything at all.'
Everyone was looking at Owen and Hazel, but they said nothing. There were things they knew about the nature and cause of the Darkvoid that no one else knew, but they had sworn long ago, for very good reasons, to keep those secrets to themselves. Besides, there was no obvious link between what they knew and the phenomenon Beckett had described. Or so they hoped.
'Speaking of the Hadenmen,' said Beckett after the silence had dragged on for a while, 'we come to the last part of my report. I think we were all somewhat surprised when the revived Hadenmen joined the rebel forces to overthrow the Empress, and we were even more surprised when we discovered the augmented men were actually obeying orders, and taking prisoners when the Empire forces surrendered rather than just butchering them all, as they did in the past. They were, after all, the official Enemies of Humanity until the AIs of Shub replaced them in that role.
'You assured us they had reformed, sir Deathstalker. You said we could work with them. We should have known better. We should never have trusted cyborgs, men who threw away their humanity in the search for perfection through tech, who launched the great Crusade of the Genetic Church, dedicated to destroying Humanity and replacing us with themselves. The men machines in their golden ships. The butchers of Brahmin II. Well, sir Deathstalker, your old allies have returned to Brahmin II, destroyed their defenses, and taken control of the planet and its population. They've renamed it New Haden and surrounded it with a blockade of their golden ships. The few reports that got out before all communication was cut off said the Hadenmen had been experimenting on the prisoners they'd taken, turning them into new, improved Hadenmen.
'We have no idea of what's happening down there now. And since we don't have a hope in hell of getting past the golden ships, we have no way of rescuing the people of Brahmin II. Unless, of course, the Deathstalker has some ideas? He is, after all, the man who loosed the Hadenmen on Humanity again!'
A rising growl of anger moved through Parliament, from the MPs to those gathered watching on the floor of the House. It was a disturbed, dangerous sound, and only died reluctantly away when Owen glared about him. 'They were a necessary evil,' he said flatly. 'We couldn't have defeated Lionstone's Fleet without them. Ask General Beckett. I had… hopes the augmented men had moved on beyond their old agendas. I knew one Hadenman who was as fine a man as any I ever met. But it seems I have been betrayed again by those I placed my faith in. Still, let's not exaggerate the dangers of the situation. They hold only one planet, and as yet they don't have enough
