Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

behind.
    Owen also couldn’t help noticing that at least half the vegetation seemed to be slowly but determinedly stalking the other half. The first attack caught them all by surprise. Long, flailing tendrils with inch-long thorns lashed out at them from every side at once, striking with unexpected strength and speed. The barbs drew blood, and the tendrils sought to wrap themselves around their prey with springy tenacity.
    But they parted easily under the keen edge of a steel blade, and the oozing remnants sprang away again.
    More tendrils struck down from above, but the party stood their ground, hacking and cutting about them till the tattered remnants were forced to retreat. Owen drew his disrupter and blasted one of the areas where the bloodred tendrils had seemed to spring from. The others followed suit, and soon there were a half dozen small fires burning around them. There was a certain amount of quivering and rustling in the surrounding foliage, but what was left of the tendrils showed no signs of further aggression.
    Owen put his gun away and looked at the others. “Anyone badly hurt?”
    “Just scratches,” said Hazel. “Damn, those things were fast.” “Should we do something about the fires?”
    said Moon. “They could spread—“ “Let them,” said Midnight, wiping away blood from a cut on her face that had come dangerously close to an eye. “Treacherous bloody things. Let them all burn.”
    “The rain should take care of the fires,” said Owen. “And the surrounding foliage looks too drenched to catch sparks. But let’s try to remember, there could be colonists’ settlements not that far away, so if you have to use your guns, aim carefully.”
    “Yes, leader,” said Bonnie. “I’m sure that would never have occurred to us. How ever did we manage till you came along?”
    Owen ignored that and gestured for Moon to lead off again.
    The slow march continued, slogging through deepening mud until their legs ached from the strain. Moon continued to treat it all as a casual ramble, stopping every now and again to pull up some unfamiliar piece of plant life, compare it against his data banks, and announce happily that since it wasn’t officially identified, he had the right to name it. Unfortunately, this tended to involve very labored puns in Latin, which no one but Moon understood or appreciated, so after a few pointed death threats from certain members of the party, he kept his enthusiasm to himself, silently studying everything that didn’t shrink away fast enough.
    Given the general denseness of the jungle, and the way all the plant life fought for every square inch of light and rain, Owen had expected to spend most of his journey hacking a path with his sword, but after the incident with the barbed tendrils, the jungle seemed to be going out of its way to slowly open up a path before them. Owen thought some more about how aware the jungle might be. He raised the subject with Oz, who responded with a running commentary on what was known of Lachrymae Christi’s plant life. Most of this was monumentally boring, and Owen tuned it out until something odd caught his attention. “Hold it, Oz, back up. No insects at all here? Are you sure?” “Quite sure. Like animal life, they just never caught on here. The plant life is so aggressive on all levels that all other kinds of life never found an ecological niche to prosper in.”
    “But if there’s no insects, and as far as I can see no flowers… how do the plants propagate? How does fertilization occur?” “Well, it certainly doesn’t involve the birds and bees. Take a look over to your right, about four o’clock.”
    Owen looked, and saw two large masses of foliage moving together, rocking back and forth. “Wait a minute. Are they doing what I think they’re doing?” “I’m afraid so. You should think yourselves lucky you didn’t arrive in the rutting season. Do you want to know how the trees do it?” “No!”
    “Suit yourself. You’ve led a really sheltered life in some ways, Owen.” The AI went back to talking about how the rain drained away through the ground, and ended up in vast subterranean lakes that fed the jungle’s great root system, and Owen went back to not listening.
    They trudged on for another hour or so, getting even wetter and more miserable, before the jungle moved against them again. They’d fallen into a plodding routine, following the path that opened up before them, until Oz suddenly pointed out