Deathstalker Honor (71 page)

“We’re here on a mercy mission,” Owen said patiently. “Mother Superior Beatrice Christiana, better known as the Saint of Technos III, resigned from running the reformed Church to come and run a Mission here for the leper colonists. Being who she is, she soon turned the Mission into a social and communications center for the whole planet, and combined the various scattered settlements into one people at last. They were actually on the verge of becoming a viable, self-sustaining colony when the Hadenmen attacked. Which is presumably what that bloody golden ship was doing here. Anyway, there’s a force of Hadenmen down here, concentrating their attacks on Saint Bea’s Mission. We are here to protect the Mission and its people.”

“Why us?” said Bonnie. “Why isn’t the regular army here, earning its pay?”

“Because the regular army doesn’t give a toss about a colony of lepers. Everyone Saint Bea approached was busy elsewhere. Finally she approached me personally, and,” said Owen, smiling ruefully, “I find it kind of hard to say no to a Saint.”

“Next time ask me,” said Bonnie. “I’ll coach you. There are no Saints where I come from, Deathstalker. We eat them.”

“Right,” said Midnight. “One of the first things we did after overthrowing the Empire was to dissolve the established Church, and replace it with the Mystical Order of Steel. We are warriors, and we follow the warrior way.”

“Sometimes I wonder if our worlds have anything in common apart from the Maze,” said Owen.

“Well, there’s always you,” said Midnight, smiling a little too warmly for Owen’s liking. “Wherever there’s one of me, there’s always one of you. We were fated to be together.”

“Right,” said Bonnie, idly tugging a gold ring piercing something Owen preferred not to look at. “Right . . .”

“Now, that is interesting,” said Moon, still bent over the control panels. Everyone looked around quickly.

“I really hate it when he says that,” said Hazel. “It nearly always means something quite appallingly nasty is going on.”

“No, this really is interesting,” said Moon. “I don’t know what it means, but it definitely is interesting.”

Owen moved over to join him and studied the sensor displays. “This makes no sense at all,” he said finally. “It’s like something is slowly . . . enveloping the
Sunstrider
. Some kind of organic material.”

“Hold everything,” said Bonnie. “Are you saying there’s something on this benighted world big enough to
swallow
a starship?”

“Not as such,” said Moon. “Nothing here but plant life, remember?”

“We’re going to have to go out and take a look,” said Hazel. “See what else can go wrong on this bloody mission.”

“Better watch your language when we meet Saint Bea,” said Owen, smiling. “She’ll make you do penance.”

“I already am,” growled Hazel. “Ever since I met you.”

 

For a while the airlock outer door refused point-blank to open. All the systems were functioning, but the door wouldn’t budge. They tried cranking it open with the manual release, but all that happened was that Hazel broke two fingernails trying to shift it. She lost her temper completely and shot out the locking system with her disrupter. Owen and Moon dragged the door halfway open, and the party took turns squeezing through and dropping down to the surface below, gun and sword in hand.

Outside, the jungle was a riot of color, all of it in shades of red. The black trees had scarlet leaves, the shrubbery and foliage were a blushing crimson, and the thick, curling vines were a disturbing shade of pink. The local vegetation never saw any sun, so chlorophyll never really got started. Red was the order of the day in Lachrymae Christi’s jungle, and a hell of a lot of it was determinedly draping itself over the
Sunstrider II
.

Owen and his companions cut and hacked their way clear of the airlock, were drenched immediately by the pouring rain, and finally turned and looked back at their ship. A network of shocking pink vines had already covered much of the outer hull from stem to stern, and more vines were crawling into position, inching doggedly forward like lengths of animated intestine. Thick leaves like scarlet palms slapped against the hull from all sides, adding still more layers, as though the jungle was trying to bury all traces of the intruding ship.

By the time Owen had taken all this in, the airlock opening had already disappeared behind a mat of bloodred vines. He struggled back through the clinging foliage and tried to cut through the vines with his sword, but the blade clung stickily to the vines, and he had to jerk hard to pull it free. He raised his disrupter and took aim. The energy beam punched a hole through the vines, and went on to do untold further damage inside the airlock. The blackened vines tried to catch alight, but the rain quickly put a stop to that. Owen watched numbly as the vines slowly but deliberately repaired and covered over the hole he’d made.

“Ah,” said Moon. “Now, that is unfortunate.”

Owen lost it completely. A shriek of pure rage and frustration burst out of him as he stamped around in a circle, hacking with his sword at any vegetation that got in his way. “That is it! That is bloody
it
! Not only have I lost my second yacht in a crash landing, not only have we now been cut off from all our supplies and extra weapons, not only is it at least twenty miles between here and the Mission, but it is pouring rain and I don’t have my cloak with me! I am soaked! I hate being wet like this! Hate it, hate it, hate it!”

He kicked viciously at a patch of vines, got his foot tangled, and fell over. No one was stupid enough to laugh. He surged to his feet again, his face crimson as the surrounding vegetation, breathing hard. Moon looked at Hazel.

“Has Owen changed while I was gone? He never used to do that.”

“No,” said Hazel. “He didn’t. Everyone stay put here while I go and have a quiet word with him.”

“My Owen never did anything like that,” said Midnight. “He was far too dignified.”

“My Owen did all kinds of things,” said Bonnie, tugging reflectively at one of her piercings.

“I’ll just bet he did,” said Midnight.

Hazel left Moon trying to make sense of the undercurrents in those last few comments, and moved cautiously forward. Owen was leaning with his head against the coal black bark of a tree trunk. His breathing had slowed somewhat, but he still had his sword in his hand. Hazel hadn’t found Owen’s outburst funny at all. In all the time she’d known him, he’d never once lost his temper like that. Given what he was capable of, if he got angry enough, Hazel found his sudden loss of control worrying. She stopped a respectful distance away and cleared her throat politely. Owen didn’t look around.

“Go away, Hazel.”

“What’s the matter, Owen?” she said quietly. “It wasn’t that bad a landing, all things considered. I mean, we’re alive.”

“It wasn’t the landing,” said Owen, staring off into the scarlet jungle. Rain ran down his face, and dripped from his nose and chin. “ It’s . . . everything. I am just so damn tired of everything going wrong. This was supposed to be a simple mission: show up, flash the powers, kick a few Hadenman butts, and move on to more important matters. Now look at us. Stranded in the middle of nowhere on a hellplanet colonized by lepers, while all hell is breaking loose in the Empire. I shouldn’t be here. I should be out there, fighting the aliens or the Hadenmen or whatever the hell Shub’s throwing at us this week. I have a duty, an obligation, to use my abilities to help Humanity. But no, I’m stuck here in the back of beyond when I’m needed elsewhere.”

“You’re needed here too,” said Hazel. “Saint Bea wouldn’t have asked for us unless things were really desperate here.”

“They’re lepers,” Owen said brutally. “They’re dying anyway. The Empire needs us more.”

“Every planet, every people, is just as important as any other,” said Hazel. “Didn’t your time as an outlaw teach you anything? It’s not just the big, important planets like Golgotha that matter. Everyone matters. I know what this is all about. It’s hurt pride. You thought you could just drop in here, act the hero for Saint Bea, and then move on to something more high-profile. Instead you screwed up. You, the Deathstalker, the living legend. You think you’re the only one that can save the Empire from its enemies. Well, you’re wrong. The Empire is perfectly capable of defending itself without you. Even the mighty Deathstalker can’t be everywhere at once. Humanity survived perfectly well before we marvelous Maze people came along, and they’ll manage just as well when we’re gone. The Maze may have made us more than human, but it didn’t make us gods. Now cut the crap and shape up, or I’ll slap you a good one.”

Owen finally turned his head and looked at her, and something in his cold eyes made Hazel wonder if she’d gone too far. But she held her ground, and after a moment Owen relaxed just a little, and tried a smile.

“You wouldn’t really hit me, would you?”

“Damn right I would.”

“Okay, I surrender. No more tantrums. Let’s go and see what kind of a fix Saint Bea’s got herself into.”

Hazel hesitated. “Are you . . . all right now, Owen?”

“No. But I am back in control. I’m just . . . tired. Tired of things never going right for me. Just once I’d like to take a trip on a ship that doesn’t crash, or get attacked, or land me up to my ass in trouble. You said it yourself: I’m supposed to be the great hero, the savior of Humanity, and I can’t even make my own life work out properly.”

Hazel had to laugh. “Owen, everyone’s life is like that. Now, let’s get back to the others and work out what we’re going to do next before we all drown in this bloody rain. Doesn’t it ever let up?”

“Not for the last few million years. Maybe we could fashion umbrellas out of the local plants.”

“I don’t think they’d like that,” said Hazel, looking around her at the surrounding vegetation, all of which seemed to be constantly if slowly on the move. “This stuff gives me the creeps. Plants should know their place.”

They returned to the others to find Bonnie and Midnight ostentatiously not talking to each other. Moon had given up trying to make sense of the situation, and was pretending interest in a quivering purple shrub the size of a small house. Owen gave his crashed ship a last look. It was already so deeply buried under crimson vegetation that it might never have been there.

“All right,” he said loudly. “Cut the chatter. It’s at least ten miles to Saint Bea’s Mission, so the sooner we get started, the sooner we can get there and get out of this rain. Oz, give me directions to the Mission.”

“Of course, Owen. Just head out of this clearing in the direction of those three trees leaning together, and I’ll guide you from there. I feel I should brief you about some of the more impressive local vegetation. It can be rather dangerous.”

“You mean it’s poisonous?”

“More like homicidal. Animal life never really got started here, so the plants prey on each other for space, light, water, rooting, etc. Down the millennia they’ve developed some very nasty tactics, and lots of ways of expressing their displeasure when thwarted. I suggest you all stick very close together, and be prepared to defend yourselves.”

Owen passed this on, and the others received it with varying degrees of disgust.

“As if this planet wasn’t unpleasant enough,” said Bonnie. “Bad enough my piercings will probably rust up in all this rain, but now we have to hack our way through miles of killer plants. I can feel one of my heads coming on.”

“Look on it as a challenge,” said Midnight. “A warrior never quails from adversity.”

“You look on it as a challenge,” said Bonnie. “And I’ll stand back and watch you doing it.”

“Cool it,” said Hazel. “I mean, come on; how dangerous can a few mobile shrubs be?”

“I have a horrible feeling we’re going to find out,” said Owen. “Moon, you take the point. Feel free to shoot or cut up anything at all you don’t like the look of. And let’s try to set a good pace, people. I hate to think what this place is like when it gets dark. And in case you were wondering, yes, all our torches are back in the ship.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised,” said Hazel. “God, I hate rain.”

They followed Oz’s murmured directions into the rain-soaked crimson forest, fighting the urge to look back at the mound where their ship had been. The
Sunstrider II
was their last link with civilized, technological Empire. From now on they were on their own.

There was little shelter to be found anywhere, rain dripping remorselessly from every surface. They were all soon soaked to the skin, and rain squelched inside their boots with every step. Their hair was plastered to their faces, and they had to keep blinking their eyes to clear them. The ground under their feet was mostly mud, flattened and compacted like stone in places, but it could change without warning into inches-deep gunk in which the party slipped and skidded, when they weren’t tripping over exposed roots or various kinds of creeping vine or ivy.