Deathstalker 01 - Deathstalker

one and had to run for their lives in sleek golden ships whose speed the Empire couldn't match.
    Not long after, Moon's ship became separated from the main Hadenman fleet, and it was ambushed and shot down by Imperial forces. It crashlanded on Loki, and Moon was one of the few survivors. He spent some time in hiding, living like an animal on what he could find or steal. He soon found that there were some kinds of human who had a use for a warrior like him, and so he passed from master to master, and planet to planet, until finally he ended up on Mistworld, like so many others, because there was nowhere else he could go. And there, his energy crystals mostly depleted, he lived among humans as little more than a human. No one in Mistport cared about his past. They had their own horrors to forget.
    And so he became just another face in the crowd, accepted as such, and learned to live as humans did.
    And then the rebels came, and the chance to finally go home, to find the Tomb on lost Haden and be the savior of his race, was just too great to turn down. He thought about the rebels and became even more uncertain. Good fighters, all of
    them, for their differing reasons. They had treated him as one of them, sometimes even as a friend as well as an ally, and they were fighting and dying now to buy him the time to awaken his people, even though the Hadenmen's first act might be to slaughter them all. Moon stared fixedly at the Tomb. He liked the rebels. They were brave and true, warriors all, committed to each other through blood and sacrifice and friendship. They felt like the family he'd never had, and always felt guilty for wanting, suspecting that was not a true Hadenman feeling. But they were humans, and he was not, and never could be. They were men and women, and he was not. Men and women had their sex cut away, along with every other irrelevance, when they became augmented men. Hadenmen were made, not born, constructed from raw materials, human and tech, as required. He wondered if his fellow rebels would still have wanted to be friends, if they'd known.
    Perhaps they would. They were remarkable people.
    But they were not his people. If he was ever to have the company of his own kind, the sense of belonging he had craved for so long, he had no choice but to awaken the Hadenmen from their Tomb. He moved steadily over to the control panels, set conveniently to hand, and began confidently to run through the quickening routines programmed into him so many years before. And even as his hands moved over the panels in response to implanted memories, he still found time to wonder whether his craving for his own kind was also programming, or a simple human emotion he had acquired along the way.
    He'd almost finished when he sensed something behind him. His augmented hearing hadn't picked anything up, but his Maze-adjusted mind knew he was no longer alone. He spun round and found himself facing the alien he'd seen earlier with the Empire forces. It towered over him, flexing its clawed hands, huge in its
    spiked crimson armor. Ropy saliva ran from its grinning jaws and smoked where it hit the floor. It occurred to Moon that a human might have been paralyzed by terror, but his calm logical mind was already studying the hulking figure for possible weaknesses. He computed its probable strength and speed, based on obvious facts such as size and weight and proportion of muscle tissue, and came up with disquieting answers. He drew his disrupter from its holster and fired it in one blindingly swift movement, but the alien was no longer there. It had moved even faster than him and dodged to one side.
    Moon bolstered his gun and drew his sword. It would take two minutes for the gun's energy crystal to recharge, and he had a strong feeling the fight would be over by then. Maybe he should have picked a projectile weapon after all. He smiled, and felt an almost human thrill at the thought of a real challenge at last. Given time, he would have enjoyed studying the alien, its abilities and attributes, but it had to die. It was standing between him and the awakening of his people. He used the last of his remaining energy to revitalize as many of his built-in options as possible. New life surged through him, as though he himself was awakening from the long sleep of being human. Of being only human.
    Old systems, long unused, came on-line again, and Moon grinned coldly. The alien was about to meet a real Hadenman and find out why all the Empire