Deathstalker Honor

avail. I can only assume the damage to the computer systems was more extreme than I conjectured.'

Hazel made a noise in the dark. 'Think of something, Owen!'

'Mostly I'm thinking about strangling Moon,' said Owen.

'I have come up with another plan,' said Moon. 'Your stardrive is derived from alien technology, and therefore has its own, separate, systems. These appear to be intact. I believe I can maintain a connection long enough to use the alien drive to jump-start the standard engines.'

'Hold everything,' said Bonnie. 'You want to activate a hyperdrive this far into a planet's gravity well? You could collapse the whole star system! Bad as things are, I have no desire to see what the inside of a black hole looks like!'

'Trust me,' said Moon. 'I'm almost sure I know what I'm doing.'

There was a moment that seemed to last forever. Space turned inside out, stretching and almost tearing, and colors slowed to a crawl. There was a brilliant light coming from somewhere, but they weren't seeing it with their eyes. Angels were singing a single sustained chord, in a harmony almost too perfect to be borne. And then everything snapped back to normal, and the light was just the bridge's normal lighting and the song was the roar of the ship's engines as Moon fought to slow the Sunstrider II's plummeting descent. Owen looked dazedly about him, and slowly realized some of the control panels were back on-line again.

'We have sensors!' said Owen. 'No sign of the Hadenmen ship, but the surface of the planet is coming up awfully fast! Brace yourselves, people! This is going to hurt!'

The Sunstrider II came howling down out of the clouds, slicing through the pouring rain so quickly that the water evaporated before it could even touch the hull. And then the jungle reached up and the battered yacht tore a ragged path through the trees, slowing gradually until finally it slammed to a halt in a cloud of steam and ripped-up vegetation. The engines shut down, and all was quiet for a while, save for the gentle, continuous hiss of rain falling on the super-heated hull.

Inside, the yacht's passengers sat slumped in their crash webbing, letting their heartbeats and breathing slow gradually back to normal. Apart from Moon, who had already thrown aside his webbing and was leaning over the control panels, studying the sensor readings. Owen sighed heavily.

'Well, there goes another bloody yacht. Let's all pray that the damage is repairable, or we're going to be spending an extended holiday in this charming little paradise. There isn't another supply ship due here for months. Moon, any life-form readings out there?'

'Just the jungle,' said Moon. 'Plant life in various forms. No animals, or insects. And no humans in sensor range. We are alone.'

'Finally, some news from Moon that I can live with,' said Hazel. 'How far are we from Saint Bea's Mission?'

'Main computers are still down,' said Moon. 'I am currently unable to access that information.'

'Oz?' said Owen.

'If the ship followed the trajectory I plotted, we're not too far from where we should be,' murmured the AI. 'The Mission should be located some ten miles north-northeast of here. Though that is of course an estimate. Things got a little hairy there at the end. Allowing for error, we could be talking a twenty-mile hike. Still, what's a few miles trekking through impenetrable jungle? The exercise will do you good.'

Owen shook his head tiredly. 'This is Shandrakor all over again, I just know it.'

'Not necessarily,' said Moon. 'At least this time there are no hungry killer aliens out there. There is no animal life on the entire planet, apart from the colonists. Though the files do contain some rather disturbing accounts of encounters with large and mobile vegetation displaying a distinctly antagonistic attitude.'

'Killer plants,' said Bonnie. 'Wonderful. Look, will somebody please fill me in on what the hell we're doing here? I was quite happily halfway through a four-day drunk when I got your message. You made it sound quite sane at the time.'

'The state you were in, you would have volunteered for a mission to Shub,' said Midnight. 'How can you abuse your body in such a fashion?'

'Practice, darling, practice.' Bonnie dropped the black warrior woman a wink, and she looked away, exasperated. Bonnie laughed. 'Come on, somebody fill in the blanks for me. Do I at least get to kill somebody? Preferably lots of somebodies?'

'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