Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

or strong she was, she couldn’t save everyone, even when it mattered most to her. She cut down the rest of the cannon’s crew and held the cannon over her head, her arms muscles bulging. She’d never lifted anything so heavy before, but in that moment she felt like she could hold it aloft forever. She looked around her, picked the heaviest concentration of Hadenmen, and threw the cannon into their midst with all her strength. The cannon exploded on impact, and a sudden intense light swept through the augmented men, blowing them away like leaves in a firestorm. When the ground finally settled, there was a great crater, and broken bodies everywhere. Some of them were lepers. Midnight tried to feel something for them, and couldn’t, just yet. Not while she still had that numb hole in her life where Bonnie used to be.
    She stumbled back to the wall, to guard the gaping hole. And that was when she heard the sound from inside.
    Midnight stepped through the hole, and saw what was left of Bonnie Bedlam lying some distance inside.
    It was mostly bones, scorched and blackened by the terrible energies of the disrupter beam, but somehow still held together by strands of bloody meat. Bits and pieces of organs could be seen pulsing inside the broken ribs and shattered sternum. Terribly, the thing was still alive, and suffering. Midnight fumbled forward and knelt beside the body. The skull grinned at her with broken teeth, but incredibly, there was an intact eye in one of the sockets. As Midnight watched, another eye slowly formed in the second socket. Strands of muscle formed out of nowhere, creeping over the bone like solid worms, pulling the lower jaw back into place. Farther down the body, the organs were repairing themselves. The heart was beating, though its blood just splashed everywhere for the moment. The lungs reinflated, sucking in air. Long red muscles formed striations and linked the arms and legs together. Midnight looked back at the head. Skin covered the wet red meat, and lips formed slowly over the teeth. The mouth opened, and breath hissed in and out. “Told you I could take it,” whispered Bonnie Bedlam, smiling painfully. “We survived a direct hit from a cannon once before, on Mistworld, remember? Of course, Owen was with us then. We were always stronger together.” “Jesus, you’re a mess,” said Midnight, caught between tears and laughter. “I’ll get you to the infirmary.”
    “No time. You guard that hole in the wall while I finish regenerating. And if you see them setting up another disrupter cannon, pick me up and run like hell, because there’s no way I could survive another blast like that.” “You got it,” said Midnight Blue. “If anyone gets past me, bite their ankles.” She moved back to the wall, stepped into the great hole, and defied the Hadenmen to get past her. She stood there with her ax in her hands, ready to stand her ground till the battle was over, till the death, or hell froze, whichever came first.
    The two Sisters of Glory were seemingly everywhere at once, luring their leper charges on, leading from the front, singing hymns and psalms as they killed everything that came against them. The leper colonists fought with the souls of warriors, holding their own against the Hadenmen for as long as they could. For all their strength and speed, their implanted armor and steelmesh, the augmented men couldn’t stand against enemies who threw themselves into the fray not caring whether they lived or died. One leper would cling to a Hadenman’s sword arm, holding it down while another leper went for the throat. Some deliberately took a sword in the belly, trapping the blade so others could drag the killer down. The Hadenmen were efficient, but the lepers were inspired. The battle surged back and forth, toward the Mission and away again, with neither side able to hold the advantage for long.
    Sister Kathleen saw the bomb first. Caught for a moment in a quiet eddy, she looked around for a new opponent, and saw six Hadenmen carrying a heavy explosive device among them, heading slowly for the main gate of the Mission. A bodyguard of six more Hadenmen surrounded the bomb, using their disrupters to clear the way before them. Kathleen recognized the device, having worked in mining before she came to the Church. She called out to Marion, naming the new threat, and together they carved a path through the surging crowd toward the bomb.
    The two Sisters reached the bomb’s honor guard