'Keep moving, and be ready to react whenever whatever it is hits us. We've fought Hadenmen and Grendels. I doubt there's anything a bunch of plants can throw at us that we can't handle.'
'Getting cocky again, Deathstalker.'
While they were busy talking, the ground dropped out from under their feet. Owen's stomach lurched as he plunged down into the mud and just kept going. He scrabbled about him for something to cling onto, but all the surrounding vegetation had drawn back out of reach. There was only the mud, thick and confining, sucking him down. The others were yelling all around him, and from what he could see were just as badly off as him. The mud began moving, circling like a slow-motion whirlpool. The mud was already up to Owen's waist, and he was still sinking. He fought to stay upright, and tried to remember what he'd heard about dealing with quicksand. You were supposed to be able to swim in it, if you kept your nerve, but when Owen tried to move his legs, they barely responded at all. The mud smothered his movements easily, thick and clinging and bitterly cold.
The circling speed of the mud was increasing all the time, a whirlpool now of mud and grasses and loose vegetation a good twenty feet in diameter, churning remorselessly in a widdershins motion, pulling in everything around it like a slow, determined meat grinder. Owen tried to see how the others were doing, but the mud held him firmly, creeping up his stomach toward his chest. He held his arms above him, but there was nothing to cling onto. A great sucking sinkhole appeared in the center of the whirlpool, pulling everyone toward it. Owen could hear the others shouting, but they didn't seem to be making any sense. His constant struggle to stay upright and keep his face out of the mud was tiring him out, and getting him nowhere. His heart pounded frantically, and panic threatened to overwhelm his thoughts. Drowning in mud was supposed to be a really bad way to go.
He could almost feel the thick, soft weight of it forcing its way down his throat as he sucked for air that never came…
Owen took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm. He had to work through his options, think of a way out of this, or he was a dead man. He craned his neck and saw Hazel fighting the mud with all her strength. The mud was already over her chest. Moon had stopped struggling, his face calm. Owen couldn't see Bonnie or Midnight. He hoped they hadn't already been swallowed up. The point was, none of them could help him. He was going to have to do it himself. The mud was getting colder all the time, sucking up his body heat. His teeth had begun to chatter. He was being carried inevitably closer to the sinkhole, the churning mud and grasses moving faster and faster. Owen didn't know where the mud ended up after it had been through the sucking hole, but he didn't think he'd enjoy finding out firsthand.
He tried to summon his Maze powers, but he couldn't calm his mind enough to call them up. He tried to reach out to the surrounding foliage, looking for something to grab onto, but it was all well out of reach. Think, think. If he couldn't go to the foliage, maybe he could bring it to him… He still had his disrupter in his hand, held up out of the mud to protect it. He aimed carefully and shot a nearby tree dead square at the bottom of its wide trunk.
The energy beam punched straight through the trunk, and the tree toppled slowly forward across the whirlpool, the splintered remains of its lower trunk and heavy roots holding it in place. The surging mud brought Owen sweeping around and slammed him hard against the black trunk. The impact knocked the breath out of him, but he clung to the trunk with both hands, and it held him in place, even against the steady pull and pressure of the mud. The others also hit the trunk as they came around, and clung to it and each other. After that it was only a matter of strength and determination to drag themselves along the tree trunk and onto firmer land. They crawled a safe distance away and then collapsed on their backs, letting the rain slowly wash the mud off them. They lay there for some time, getting their breath back, until finally Owen forced himself back onto his feet. He beat away some more of the mud from his legs and waist, and glared at the slowing whirlpool.
'That was no accident,' he said flatly. 'We were herded here. The jungle wanted to be rid of us. On some level it must be aware, capable of cooperating against anything it sees as a threat.'
Hazel sat up slowly. 'So how are we going to get to Saint Bea's Mission if the whole damned jungle's determined to stop us?'
'We just have to be more determined than it is,' said Owen. He consulted Oz to make sure he'd got the direction right, and then blasted an opening in the foliage with his disrupter. He waited till the crimson vegetation had closed together again, and then borrowed Hazel's disrupter and blasted it open again. 'From now on we take it in turns to keep blasting a trail, using our guns in sequence as they recharge, backing it up with explosives as necessary, until the jungle learns to respect us and allows us to go where we want to go.'
In the end, it was as simple as that. The jungle eventually got fed up with being incinerated, and went back to opening up a path in the direction the party wanted to go in. The scarlet and purple vegetation shook angrily around them for a while, but made no further moves to threaten them. Owen continued on point, weapons at the ready, carefully checking the way ahead for booby-traps. The rain kept falling, and they were all shuddering from the cold. Any normal human would have been in serious trouble by now, sliding into shock as their core body temperature slowly lowered, but all five of the party had been through the Maze. And Moon was a Hadenman.
Along the way, as much to distract himself as anything, Owen brought Bonnie and Midnight up to date on the background of Saint Bea and her Mission. When the rebels had finally won the war on Technos III and put an end to the fighting. Mother Superior Beatrice hadn't felt she was needed there anymore. So she returned to Golgotha, and set about rebuilding the established Church by throwing out all the political and corrupt elements. Turning the quasi-military organization of the Church of Christ the Warrior into the pacifistic Church of Christ the Redeemer wasn't easy, but it helped that the Saint of Technos III had a huge popular following, not least due to Toby Shreck's docu footage of her working in the slaughterhouse field hospital of Technos III as a nurse, and that the majority of the Church wanted change. Most of those who would have objected either had died in the rebellion or were on trial for crimes against Humanity.
But after achieving this miracle. Mother Beatrice found herself declared a Saint on all sides, especially by the media, and this upset her greatly. So as soon as the new Church was up and running, she renounced her leadership and went to Lachrymae Christi to minister to the lepers, who needed her more than anyone else—and perhaps because it was possibly the only place the media wouldn't follow her.
Before her involvement, lepers had just been dumped where their ship landed, and left to live or die as best they could. Supply ships were infrequent. Saint Bea changed all that. She used her influence and contacts to get food and tech and medicines dropped on a regular basis, and built her Mission into a spiritual and communications center for the whole leper population. And all went well. Until the Hadenmen came. Augmented serpents in paradise.
'Damned if I'd call this place paradise,' said Hazel. 'Why did she contact you, Owen, and not me? Or Jack and Ruby?'
'Apparently Jack and Ruby are off on a mission of their own somewhere. And she probably thought I'd be more… approachable.'
'More of a soft touch, certainly.'
Owen grinned and shrugged. 'My life's been tough enough without having God mad at me.'
'I never really thought of you as religious,' said Hazel. 'You've broken enough commandments in your time.'
'I'm what the Empire made me,' said Owen. 'I was raised to believe in the Families first, the Iron Throne second, and God when I had time. But of them all, only my faith in God remains. I like to think that Someone out there watches and cares.' He looked at Hazel. 'How about you?'
'I believe in hard cash and a loaded gun,' Hazel said briskly, and Bonnie and Midnight nodded more or less in unison. Hazel would have left it at that, but she could see Owen wanted more. 'I live my life by my own rules, and I've always had problems with authority figures. If there is anything after this life, I'll deal with it when I get there. As for Saint Bea, all right, she's done a lot of good in her time, but so have we. She saved lives in her hospital, and we saved whole worlds by killing the right people. In the end, which of us made the most difference?'
'Saint Bea is a real hero,' Owen said firmly. 'She was a volunteer. An aristo who gave up everything to minister to the needy. We were all dragged into the rebellion, kicking and screaming all the way. So when she asked for my help, I couldn't say no. And how does God reward me? Crashes my ship and strands me on a leper colony. Thanks a whole bunch, Big Guy.'
Hazel looked back at Bonnie and Midnight. 'Didn't you have anyone like Saint Bea on your worlds?'
'Nah,' said Bonnie. 'The Church fell apart after the rebellion. Nothing's really replaced it. We live for the day, and let eternity take care of itself.'
Midnight sniffed dismissively. 'In my Empire, the Church found a new role after the rebellion. Everyone is a
