Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

Hadenmen believe in the Church of the Genetic Crusade. The perfectability of man. Man becomes God eventually. I’m no longer sure what I personally believe. So much has changed since I went through the Maze. I touched something there, something much greater than myself, but whether that was the Maze or something the Maze put me in touch with… And afterward I died, and was brought back to life again. My thoughts, my memories, my… self, should have been lost forever, but here I am. I have no memories of being dead. Owen, you said I spoke to you even after I was killed by the Grendel.” “You did,” Owen said stubbornly. “I heard your voice, down in the caverns of the Wolfling World. You told me the right code sequence to open the Tomb of the Hadenmen. Without that… everything would have been different.” “Then I too have something to discuss with Mother Superior Beatrice,” said Moon. “Even if it is only the exact nature of guilt. I shall be interested to hear her replies.”
    “Hold everything,” said Bonnie. “Back up and go previous. I think I must have missed something along the way. Why the hell do the Hadenmen want this bloody planet anyway? I mean, there’s no tech here, no mineral deposits, just plants with attitude and colonists who have to count their fingers after they’ve shaken hands. Why would the Hadenmen waste troops and resources here? Moon, does this world have any strategic importance to the Hadenmen?” “Not that I am aware of,” said Moon. “The colonists are not suitable material for being made over into Hadenmen, and the planet isn’t suitable for a Base or a Nest. I can only assume there is something of a unique nature here that they desire, which is as yet unknown to us.”
    “Well, if we stumble across any of the invading army, try to leave one of them alive,” said Owen. “I’ll hold him down, and Hazel can ask him questions.” “I’ve got a question of my own, for Saint Bea,” said Hazel. “Namely, what the hell just the five of us are supposed to do against a whole invading army, with no ship, weapons, or backup?”
    “Maybe she’s hoping for a miracle,” said Owen.
    In the end, it took them a day and a night and most of the next day of slow, hard slogging through the jungle and mud and rain to reach Saint Bea’s Mission. They drank water from occasional standing pools. It tasted brackish, and gave them all a mild case of the runs, but at least they were able to keep it down. They’d been less lucky trying to discover which parts of the jungle it was safe to eat. Most of it came straight back up again, tasting twice as bad in the process. There was no real shelter from the rain, so they spent the night sitting miserably together around a tree, trying to sleep. By the time they reached the Mission, they were tired, cold, hungry, and very wet. There was no warning. They just forced their way through yet another series of closely set trees, and found themselves looking out into a wide clearing, with the Mission set squarely in the middle. There was about twenty feet of open ground, and then a tall wooden wall marked the outer boundary of the Mission. The wall had been constructed of tightly packed black tree trunks, and looked reassuringly solid. The Mission itself was the size of a small village, with a long, slanting wooden roof covering everything within the walls. A single gate faced them, some twelve feet tall and ten wide, with a wooden watchtower on each side. Definitely a low-tech world, thought Owen. Hate to see what a disrupter cannon would do to that wall. Hate to think what their plumbing’s like. He stepped out into the clearing, and the watchtower sentries spotted him immediately and sounded the alarm. Owen led his party slowly across the open clearing. Armed men appeared on a catwalk inside the top of the outer wall. They were cloaked and hooded figures, some with energy weapons, most with bows and arrows. Owen didn’t disparage the bows. An arrow could kill you just as dead as anything else if it hit the right spot. He murmured to the others to keep their hands conspicuously away from their weapons, and kept a careful eye on the watchtower sentries. One had what appeared to be a telescope trained on the newcomers. Hopefully, once he’d identified the approaching party as being human, and not Hadenmen, the armed figures on the wall would calm down a little, but Owen still kept himself ready. Tired as he was, he was pretty sure he