d'Ark.
He'd been on the run from his own security guards, badly wounded, fleeing desperately in a damaged flyer. They'd shot him down only a few miles from his Standing. He'd staggered away from the burning wreckage, bleeding profusely, and set his back against a nearby tree, to hold him up while he made his last stand.
And then Hazel had appeared out of nowhere to save him from his enemies, cutting them down like a glorious if somewhat shop-soiled valkyrie, and together they'd fled Virimonde in the first
'Come on, stud, let's get this show on the road. I haven't killed anyone in hours, and I'm starting to get twitchy.'
And then there was Hazel, large as life and twice as dangerous, carrying enough guns to start her own war. Owen had to smile.
'What's so funny?' she said suspiciously.
'Oh, nothing. It's just that according to Oz, we've touched down at the exact spot where you and I first met.'
'You always were too nostalgic for your own good, Deathstalker. Crack that airlock and let's get our feet dirty. I didn't come all this way just to stand around.'
'You don't have a single sentimental bone in your body, do you. Hazel?'
'For which I thank the good Lord daily. Sentiment just gets in the way of getting the job done.'
Owen sighed and opened the airlock. The planet's air wafted in, and he took a deep breath, expecting the old, familiar scents of grass and earth and growing things. Instead he coughed harshly as his lungs were filled with hot, dry air choked with dust. Owen and Hazel looked at each other, and then Owen stepped cautiously out onto the planet he had once owned. The sky was dark and overcast, the light gray and lifeless. Where once there had been green fields and the rich foliage of rambling woods, now there was only churned-up mud for as far as he could see in any direction. No fields or crops or low stone boundary walls, just the mud, dark and gritty with trodden-in ashes.
For a moment Owen thought he must have come to the wrong planet. Nowhere on the pastoral world of Virimonde had ever looked like this. But of course it did, now. Just as he'd always known it would, deep down.
'Damn,' said Hazel quietly. 'I'm sorry, Owen.'
'I think the trees were over there,' said Owen. He tried to point, but his arm seemed very heavy. 'Right over there. But they're gone now. It's all gone. Everything. Nothing to show they or we were ever here. They even took my past away from me. And it's all my fault.'
'How the hell do you work that out?' said Hazel.
'I was Lord of this world. This planet and everyone on it were given to me, and put under my protection. But I went away and left them defenseless when the Empire's wolves came. I wasn't here when they needed me.'
'Now, that is bullshit,' said Hazel. 'They threw you out! Your own security people turned against you. You were outlawed. And you can be damned sure there wasn't a man or a woman here who wouldn't have cheerfully sold you out in a moment for the price on your head. Your cousin David was Lord here after you, and he couldn't even save himself when the Empire forces came. Hell, he was one of them, and they killed him anyway.'
'You're right,' said Owen. 'But it doesn't help. I should have been here.'
'Then you'd be dead too. Is that what you want?'
'Sometimes. The old me is dead. I lost him somewhere along the long rebel trail that led to Lionstone's Court. I miss him. I liked him a lot better than the killing machine I've become.'
'Don't start that again. Change isn't death.'
'It was for Virimonde. This used to be a food planet. The crops and livestock we raised here fed people all across the Empire. Who'll feed them now? Look at it, Hazel. They killed this world.'
'You could start over. Pump enough microorganisms into the soil, plant the right seeds, and this world could bloom again. In time.'
'Maybe. But it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be the world I knew.'
Hazel shook her head exasperatedly. 'It always comes back to you, doesn't it, Deathstalker? Typical aristo, seeing everything in terms of himself. Virimonde isn't the only world to get trashed by the Empress's whims. That's the kind of thing we fought the rebellion over. Remember?'
Owen tried to smile for her. 'I know. I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I don't really have the right, I suppose. My people lost everything. But I can at least avenge them. Valentine will pay for what he did here. I'll see him die, and die hard, and to hell with the consequences.'
Hazel clapped him hard on the shoulder. 'That's more like it. When all else fails, there's always revenge.'
'You're a woman of simple pleasures. Hazel.'
'That's what you think, stud.' She grinned at Owen, and he had to grin back.
They stood together for a while, sharing the moment. The world was very quiet, not even a murmur of breeze to disturb the dead silence. Owen and Hazel looked slowly around them, and nothing looked back. Hazel frowned suddenly.
'What?' said Owen.
'I hate to sound morbid… but shouldn't there be a hell of a lot of bodies lying around? Or bits of bodies, or… something? All I can see is miles and miles of mud.'
'You've got a point,' said Owen slowly. 'It is a bit… tidy, isn't it? I wasn't aware anyone had sent in a clean- up crew yet. Hang on a minute.' He accessed his AI. 'Oz, where are all the bodies?'
'Damned if I know, Owen. According to the records, there was a major battle right here, between the incumbent peasants and the invading forces.'
'Scan the area, Oz. Find me some bodies.'
'Scanning. Now, that is interesting. I'm picking up some decayed animal remains mixed in with the mud, but absolutely no trace anywhere of human remains, in any form. I have no explanation for this.'
'So what the hell happened to the bodies? Could Shub have paid a visit here, looking for raw materials for their Ghost Warriors?'
'Unlikely,' said the AI. 'Even allowing for the current scattered state of the Imperial Fleet, such a visit would hardly have gone unreported. And you can forget about a clean-up crew. There isn't enough manpower available to deal with the needs of the living right now, never mind the dead. Unless… Valentine had them removed.'
'Why would he do a thing like that?'
'To show he's sorry, and make amends?'
Hazel cut in, demanding to know what Oz was saying. Owen told her, and she snorted dismissively. 'You can forget that. Valentine never apologized for anything in his life.'
'But I'll bet he does know what happened,' said Owen. 'It's the kind of thing he'd want to know. So I guess we'll just have to slog our way through the mud to my old Standing, haul him out by the scruff of the neck, and ask him.'
'Sounds like a plan to me,' said Hazel. 'Is it okay if I stick my gun in his ear while you question him?'
'Be my guest.'
Owen started out across the sea of churned mud in the direction he thought his old Standing lay. The distance was concealed behind a gray haze, grimly enigmatic. According to Oz, his old home was just over two miles away, so he and Hazel were just out of range of the castle's sensors. Unless Valentine had souped them up too. Owen smiled humorlessly. It didn't matter a damn if Valentine had. Let him know his death was coming. There might only be the two of them, against an unknown number of enemies, but Owen didn't care. Even an army couldn't stop him now. The thought pulled him up short, and he scowled. More and more these days he found himself thinking things that scared him. He wondered what he was becoming. The changes the Madness Maze had worked in him seemed to be accelerating, if anything. At first he'd just been a man with an edge, and then a man with unfamiliar esp abilities, but he hadn't been merely human in a long time. He was leaving his humanity behind, and he knew it, and it scared him. Which was perhaps why he clung so desperately to his old, human, beliefs in honor and justice.
