Deathstalker Honor (7 page)

“So much for your secret passage, Deathstalker,” Hazel hissed, trying to burrow down into the solid stone floor.

“They must have got it out of David before he died,” said Owen. “Try to wriggle backward toward the door.”

“Hell with that,” said Hazel. “I have my dignity. Wait till the beams shut off, and then we’ll make a run for it while they’re recharging.”

“One, they’re staggered. They’re not going to cut off. Two, the beams are angling lower. Now wriggle, dammit.”

They moved back down the tunnel to the door as fast as they were able, the disrupter beams passing barely an inch or so above their bodies. The lowering energy beams seared through the air just above them, filling the tunnel with the stench of ionized air. Owen’s clothes rucked up around him as he crawled backward, slowing him down, and he could hear Hazel’s many guns and ammo belts scraping along the floor. He risked a glance at her, just in time to see a disrupter beam clip her raised elbow, vaporizing the sleeve and burning the exposed flesh. She grimaced, but didn’t make a sound, and kept moving. The smell of burnt meat mingled briefly with the ozone.

Owen redoubled his efforts, scrambling backward as fast as he could force himself. He could almost feel the energy beams cutting through the air directly above him. And then he lurched to a halt as his feet slammed up against the closed steel door. He pushed against the door with all his weight, but it wouldn’t budge. Owen’s temper flared, and he kicked out with both feet. The heavy steel door flew open, half torn off its hinges. He looked back at Hazel again. She’d raised her head slightly at the noise, and a disrupter beam was heading right for her forehead.

For Owen time seemed to slow and stop, the energy beam crawling slowly through the air. And it was the simplest thing in the world for him to lunge forward and thrust his golden Hadenman hand between Hazel and the beam, and the disrupter beam ricocheted harmlessly away. Time crashed back to normal. Owen grabbed Hazel and then threw himself out of the tunnel and back into the main cave, dragging her with him. They hit the floor hard and rolled away from the opening, putting as much room as they could between themselves and the deadly tunnel. They lay together for a while, getting their breath back, and then rose just a little shakily to their feet.

“So,” said Owen. “Still feel invulnerable?”

“Oh, shut up, Deathstalker. Don’t you get tired of being right all the time?” She raised her arm gingerly and studied the burn with a curled lip. “Nasty. But it’ll heal. Thanks for the save, stud.”

“Any time,” said Owen.

Hazel looked at his golden hand. “I have to say I’m impressed. Your average disrupter beam can vaporize steel plating in under a second, but it just bounced off that golden fashion accessory of yours.”

“The Hadenmen do good work.” Owen flexed the golden metal fingers just a little self-consciously. “One of these days I really ought to sit down with some human scientists and have them analyze the hell out of this thing, but I never seem to have the time. It’s all rush, rush, rush when you’re a rebel hero.”

“And a bounty hunter.”

“That too. Speaking of which, I have another idea on how to get to dear Valentine.”

“Hold everything. Your last idea didn’t turn out so damned hot.”

“And you’re not going to like this new one much either. But we can’t hang around here; those disrupters must have set off all kinds of alarms once they were triggered. There’ll be guards here soon. Lots of them, armed to the teeth.”

“Let them come,” said Hazel. “Let them all come. I could use something to work off my frustrations on.”

“Not for the first time, you’re missing the point. The guards could pin us down here while Valentine and his cronies make their escape. And I’ll see this place reduced to rubble before I let that happen. This time Valentine is going to pay for his crimes. In blood.”

“Every now and again you remind me of why I like you,” said Hazel. “All right, Deathstalker. I’m going to regret asking, but what is this marvelous new plan of yours?”

“There’s another secret passage. One I never told David about. A Deathstalker always keeps some secrets to himself.”

“There’s a catch,” said Hazel. “I just know there’s a catch.”

“Oh, yes. The entrance to this tunnel is on the other side of the first cave on the left. The only way to get to it is past the piled-up bodies of the dead.”

“Oh, nice one, Owen. How the hell are we supposed to do that? Drag the bodies out one at a time?”

“Too long. The guards would be upon us before we’d barely started. No, there’s only one way. We’re going to have to crawl through.”

“No,” said Hazel flatly.

“Hazel . . .”

“No! Are you crazy? Dig our way through corpses, hand over hand? I won’t do it, Owen. I’d rather stand and fight here.”

“And die?”

“I’m not doing it!”

“You used to be a clonelegger!”

“I was already planning to leave the cloneleggers even before I met you. We can’t do this, Owen. It’s freezing in there. Near zero.”

“We’ve withstood worse,” said Owen. “The guards will never think to look for us among the dead.”

“That’s because no sane person would even think of doing it. I can’t, Owen. I just can’t. It would be like crawling through the contents of the freezer units on the clonelegger ship. Just like my nightmares.”

“No, it won’t. This time I’ll be there with you. You have to do this, Hazel. It’s the only way. And I can’t do it without you.”

“You bastard, Deathstalker. You always did know how to fight dirty.” Hazel drew in a long, ragged breath and let it out slowly. “All right. Let’s do it. Before I get a rush of brains to the head and tell you to go to hell.”

“Just follow me. I’ll lead the way.”

“Damn right you will.”

Owen led the way to the cave. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Hazel staring straight ahead, her face a cold mask, but her eyes were those of a frightened child. Owen had never seen her scared before, really scared.

“So,” he said, searching for the right words to say, “you were already thinking of leaving the cloneleggers before we met?”

“Yeah,” said Hazel. “They were too gross even for me. And the pay was lousy.”

“Silly me. I thought it might have something to do with morality.”

“Don’t you use the m-word in my presence, Deathstalker.”

They stopped before the entrance to the cave. Beyond the shimmering transparent force field, dead faces looked out at them. Hazel’s hands fell to her guns, but they didn’t comfort her. “Damn you, Deathstalker. Somebody’s going to pay for this.”

“Hang on to that attitude. It’ll come in very handy when we have to fight our way through Valentine’s private army at the other end.”

Hazel snorted. “Overwhelming odds I can handle. I’m used to that. Now, shut up and open the damned door. You can do that, can’t you?”

“I’m working on it.”

Owen studied the force field thoughtfully, and an idea came to him. He accessed his AI.

“Oz, do you still have the command overrides for the Standing?”

“Of course. I have override codes for every system in the castle, and every system linked into those systems since we left. Unless David or Valentine and his people have changed them.”

“Not likely. David wouldn’t have bothered, and Valentine hasn’t had time. Try it, Oz. Isolate this system, shut down this cave’s force field, and then raise it again after we’re in. Without setting off any alarms.”

The AI sniffed. “You don’t want much, do you? It’s lucky for you that I’m such a superior model. But before I work my usual miracles, can I just point out that I have no control over the refrigeration units Valentine has installed in these caves. They’re an entirely separate system that I have no access to. The temperature in the cave you propose to enter, it’s not actually zero, but it’s as close as you’re ever likely to encounter, short of opening an airlock and stepping out into deep space. Though I wouldn’t put that past you either. I’ve known depressed lemmings on window ledges with better survival instincts than you. Suffice to say that any normal human entering this cave would freeze to death extremely quickly. Assuming the shock didn’t get him first.”

“Hazel and I aren’t normal, Oz. We haven’t been for a long time. Open the cave.”

There was a sudden snap of energies cancelling out, and the force field was gone. Freezing air rushed out from the cave, steaming thickly into the cavern like a thick fog. The bitter cold hit Owen and Hazel like a blow, and they flinched back from it despite themselves. They shuddered violently and held on to each other for support. There was no smell, no stench of death or decay. It was too cold for that.

Owen and Hazel moved reluctantly forward, the cold air searing their lungs painfully as they breathed it. The nearest body was a woman, dressed in torn peasant’s clothing, charred and blackened around the energy-weapon wounds that had killed her. Her face was a mess. Half of it was missing. Owen reached out a hand toward her and then hesitated. His hand was trembling, and not from the cold.

“If she’s as cold as I think she is, you could get frostbite just by touching her,” said Hazel.

“Not to worry,” said Owen. “I used to know a lot of women like that at Court.” He shook his head slowly. “I thought I’d seen everything. Thought I’d seen so much death and suffering that this wouldn’t mean anything to me. But I was wrong.”

“When you stop feeling anything,” said Hazel, “it’ll mean part of you has died too. The human part. But as bad as you feel, you’re still going to do this, aren’t you?”

“Of course. It’s necessary. He murdered my world.”

Owen drew his disrupter, aimed it at the packed bodies before him, and fired. The energy beam tore a path through the frozen dead, creating a tunnel into the mass of bodies some three feet wide. It looked like some monstrous worm or maggot had eaten its way through the dead on its way to some unknown, awful destination. Owen put away his disrupter and turned to Hazel.

“We’ll move through the tunnel for as far as it goes, and then you’ll have to pull bodies in behind us to cover our tracks. The extra space I’ve created will give us room to maneuver at the end of the tunnel.”

Hazel looked at him for a moment. “Nothing’s going to stop you, is it, Deathstalker?”

“No. I know this is difficult for you, Hazel, but . . . I need you. Do it for me.”

“All right. For you. But you’re going to owe me one hell of a favor afterward.” She scowled at the tunnel. “It’s going to be dark, once we’re . . . inside the mass of bodies. How will we know where we’re going?”

“I know where the hidden door is,” said Owen. “I can feel it in my mind. All you have to do is follow me. Don’t worry. It’s not like there’s any chance of you getting lost in there. Let’s go.”

And he turned away from her and stepped into the chamber of the dead. The utter cold cut into him like a knife, and he shuddered so hard his teeth chattered in his head. The frozen air burned in his throat and lungs, like swallowing razor blades. Hoarfrost formed immediately on his hair and eyelids, and his eyes ached as the cold began freezing the liquid in his eyeballs. He blinked hard, gritted his teeth, and knelt down to fit himself into the tunnel he’d made. Even with his disrupter set on full, wide dispersal, it hadn’t been able to produce a very wide tunnel. He’d have to crawl through it on hands and knees. His knees jarred on the frozen bodies, frozen hard as concrete. Some had been cut open by the energy beam as neatly as a surgeon’s knife, revealing hard, frozen innards. They were mostly gray, with a few pale shades of pink or purple, even the vitality of color leached out of them by the dreadful cold.

Owen shuffled forward, reaching out with his hands to grab the bodies ahead and pull himself along. The dead flesh was so cold it burned his bare hands. Every instinct yelled at him to let go immediately, but he refused to listen. He tightened his grip and pulled himself on. When he did try to let go, his warm flesh clung stickily to the cold, and he had to use all his strength to pull free. He left patches of skin behind, but felt no pain. Owen refused to let it upset him. The skin would grow back, and it would happen less and less as his hands cooled. Already his body was adapting to the horrid cold, his core temperature plummeting at a speed that would have killed anyone else. He had no sensation left anywhere, and his eyes were stuck open, but he’d stopped shuddering. When he moved his arms and legs, they felt like they belonged to someone else. His breath no longer steamed on the air before him. He pulled himself on down the tunnel, farther into the domain of the dead, and the dark closed slowly in around him. He could hear Hazel moving close behind him, breathing harshly, and she was his only comfort.

The tunnel ran out sooner than he thought it would. He grabbed the bodies before him, pulling them apart and away from each other, opening up a path. Often limbs stuck out like barriers in his way, and he had to tug and pull, breaking them off and putting them aside, out of the way. The arms and legs snapped cleanly, like pieces of wood. He tried to think of them that way but couldn’t. They were people, his people. Sometimes he had to smash in rib cages with his more than human strength to make the necessary room. The unmoving bodies were stubbornly resistant, and he came to resent them. Didn’t they knew what he was doing was for their sake? He lashed out with his fists, and was glad his hands were numb, for more than one reason.

He could feel Hazel’s presence behind him, and hear the ragged, breaking sounds of her slow progress, but when he croaked her name, she didn’t answer him. Presumably her voice was as wrecked by the cold as his. Either way, he couldn’t turn around to see if anything was wrong. There wasn’t room. So he pressed on, heading for the door.

It was very dark now. The last of the light from the main cavern and the re-erected force field had long since died away. There were shifting and creaking sounds all around him, as the bodies redistributed their weight in response to Owen’s actions. It was almost as though the dead were stirring, disturbed by the presence of the living in their midst. Owen was glad of the dark. He had a quiet horror that one of the dead faces might open its dead eyes and turn to look at him as he passed, and he thought if he saw such a thing he might well lose his mind. There were some things no man could bear to see and still stay sane. And so he fought his way on, his heart hammering in his chest, his breathing harsh and ragged, half convinced that at any moment a dead hand would reach out of the darkness and clamp down on his arm or leg.