Hellworld (Deathstalker Prelude) Read Online Free PDF Page B

professional smile and a pleasant manner. Half his organs, most of his skin, and all of his hair had come from other people. The donors had all been anonymous, of course. Body snatchers rarely bother to learn the names of their victims.
    Williams also had a great many personal augmentations that the Empire hadn’t found out about in the short time they’d held him. Unfortunately, they were only of limited use to him now. The implanted energy crystals that ran the devices had strictly limited life spans. Once they were drained of power, all the high tech in his body would be just so much useless junk. He’d have to make the crystals last until he could acquire some more.
    He smiled suddenly. That was in the future. For the moment, though the others might not realise it, he was the most powerful man in the Squad. Let the Captain enjoy his moment in charge. He’d find out the truth soon enough. Williams’ smile widened as retractable steel claws appeared at the fingertips of his right hand and then disappeared again.
    He looked down at the soil samples he’d gathered, lying in a neat row in their little bags, spread out on the ground before him. He’d taken the samples as much to keep busy as anything, but you never knew your luck. There were often riches to be found in the soil, for those who knew where to look. There was money to be made on this planet somewhere, and he had no intention of missing out on any of it. The pinnace’s diagnostic equipment was primitive, to say the least, but it would do the job. Williams frowned, and hugged his knees a little tighter. It wasn’t at all what he was used to. His surgery had been known throughout the Empire; said by many to be the greatest since the fabled laboratories of lost Haden itself. All gone now, of course. Destroyed, by him, so that its secrets couldn’t be used against him.
    After the rebellion of the cyborg Hadenmen, the Empire had banned most forms of human augmentation. But there were always those willing to pay highly for forbidden delights. Most of the banned devices had been fairly harmless anyway, as long as they were used sensibly. With restraint. He’d just provided a service, that was all. If he hadn’t done it, someone else would have. All right, some of his patients had died, on the table and afterwards. But they knew the risks when they came to him. And most had lived, and lived well, through the extra senses and devices he’d given them.
    They all came to him; the rich, the titled, the jaded, and the decadent. All those with hidden needs and darker appetites. And to each he gave what they asked for, and charged accordingly. His prices were high, but they could afford it. Besides, he had his own needs, too.
    It was the Empire’s fault he’d become what he was. He’d made his name and his reputation with his work on the Wampyr, the adjusted men. They were to have been the Empire’s new shock troops, strong and awful and ruthlessly efficient, but someone High Up got scared of their potential, and the Empress herself closed the project down. Williams had refused to give up his life’s work. He went underground, and he went private. And his triumphs with the Wampyr were nothing to what he might have achieved if the Empire hadn’t caught up with him.
    He should never have relied so much on the body snatchers.
    But that was all behind him now. He had a new life and new opportunities. Doctors were always in short supply on colony worlds. One way or another, he would become a man of wealth and standing again. And some way, somehow, he’d use that wealth and power to get off this stinking dirtball and back into the Empire. And then they’d pay. Then they’d all pay, for what they’d done to him.
    Outside the airlock, Corbie glared at Megan DeChance.
    “A city? An alien city? I don’t believe it. I just don’t bloody believe it! All the planets the Empire had to choose from and they had to drop us on a world that’s already inhabited! I mean,