strength. The guards in the watchtowers sounded the first alarm, and lepers went running to the walls to defend the Mission. Hundreds of Hadenmen came marching through the rain in silence, attacking without challenge or war cries. They strode endlessly out of the jungle, tall and perfect like living gods, graceful beyond hope, with the sun burning in their eyes and energy weapons in their hands.
A fusillade of arrows rained down on them, mostly glancing off their internal armor. When the arrows did pierce flesh, the augmented men merely pulled them out and let them drop to the ground. They opened fire with their hand disrupters, punching holes in the wooden outer wall, concentrating their fire to create holes large enough to enter through. The wooden wall burned briefly here and there, but the driving rain soon put it out. And then the Hadenmen reached the outer wall, and the first few broke through into the compound beyond, and it was all hand- to-hand fighting after that.
The lepers up on the catwalks kept up a steady rain of arrows on their enemy, and now and again an augmented man crashed to the ground and did not rise again, an arrow in his eye. Other defenders poured boiling oil on the Hadenmen climbing through the holes they'd made in the wall. Those few defenders with energy weapons picked their targets carefully, and cursed the long two minutes it took for their guns to recharge between shots. Inside the wall, defenders rushed to meet the intruders, and held them in place by sheer weight of numbers.
Owen and Hazel fought side by side before the largest hole in the outer wall, and every Hadenman that came within reach of their weapons died. They swung their swords with far more than human strength, and the heavy steel blades sheared cleanly through internal armor and implanted steelmesh to pierce the more vulnerable organs beyond. And fast as the augmented men were, Owen and Hazel were faster. They stopped the invaders in their tracks, and step by step they pushed the Hadenmen back out into the clearing, kicking aside the bodies of the fallen to get at their inhuman foes.
Bonnie Bedlam and Midnight Blue danced among the augmented men, laughing and singing as they killed. Bonnie threw herself into the thick of the combat, cutting everything within reach, ignoring the injuries she took herself. The wounds healed so quickly she barely felt the pain, and wouldn't have cared if she had. She was death and destruction, and nothing could stand before her. Midnight teleported back and forth across the compound, blinking in and out of existence just long enough to strike down an enemy and be gone again. She seemed to be everywhere at once, and everywhere she was a Hadenman fell.
The two Sisters of Glory came howling out of nowhere, swinging their swords too fast for the human eye to follow. They viciously cut the Hadenmen, darting in and out again, slashing at vulnerable joints and unprotected throats. Sister Marion strode stiff-leggedly into the thickest part of the fighting, lurching and swaying and somehow never where her enemy thought she would be. She brought her sword around in a long, sweeping arc, cutting right through a Hadenman's glowing eyes, and then finished off her blinded prey with a knife to the heavy veins at the top of the thigh. Blood splashed her uncanny witch's outfit, and looked perfectly at home there.
Sister Kathleen swung her sword with both hands, cutting a path through the enemy through sheer determination. She ducked and darted, bobbed and weaved, elusive as mercury, leaving dead men in her wake.
Colonel William Hand went to meet the Hadenmen with grim purpose and some satisfaction, glad at last to be doing what he was meant to do and did so well. He roared and chanted old battle cries as his sword rose and fell in simple butchery, and his heart was glad. The augmented men tried ganging up on him, but Otto was always there to watch his back, hacking the long legs of the Hadenmen and bringing them down so his knife could reach their throats and faces. He laughed and sniggered as he killed, reveling in the destruction of such perfection of form.
And everywhere, inside the Mission and without, the lepers fought as best they could, with guns and swords and sharpened farm implements, anything that came to their gray and rotting hands. Anyone who could stand came out to fight, throwing themselves at the enemy with the calm desperation of those who knew they were dying anyway. And perhaps also because they were determined to preserve the few things in their life that still had value and meaning to them. The Mission, their homes, and the Saint who had come to give them hope when they thought they had lost it forever.
They would fight for the Mission, but they would die for Saint Bea.
Slowly the Hadenmen were forced back out of the Mission and into the clearing beyond, though many died on both sides in the process. The greater open space favored the augmented men, giving them more room to move, and exploit their strength and speed, so the defenders stuck close to the outer wall, guarding the open holes, refusing to be tempted farther. And still the Hadenmen came streaming out of the surrounding jungle, hundreds and hundreds of them, tall and perfect, and perfectly deadly.
A group of Hadenmen felled one of the trees with their energy weapons, and used it as a great battering ram against the main gate of the Mission. As long as the gate held, the lepers were safe from the main force of the augmented men, and both sides knew it. The heavy wooden gates shuddered under every blow, the great steel hinges groaning loudly. The guards in the watchtowers rained down arrow after arrow at the straining Hadenmen, but even when one fell, another was immediately there to take his place. The gate began to bow inward as the massive weight of the tree slammed into it again and again. After a while the constant back and forth motion of the Hadenmen churned the ground beneath them into thick mud, and the weight of the tree sent them slipping and sliding in the treacherous morass. And then Owen and Hazel arrived to save the day.
They came running through the scattered battles, cutting down anyone who got in their way. The augmented men dropped the tree trunk and turned to face their new enemy, servomotors humming loudly in their limbs, and met Owen and Hazel with sword blows so fast they were blurs in the rain. Owen and Hazel countered them easily, and took the fight to the Hadenmen. They were quickly separated by the press of bodies, and soon they were all slipping and sliding in the mud, often hanging onto the tree trunk for support while they cut and hacked.
Hazel went one on one with a giant Hadenman. Blows and parries and counters came and went inhumanly fast, and sparks flew from their blades with every contact. The rain drove down around them, running down their intent faces. In the end, Hazel beat the Hadenman's sword aside with her superior strength, and rammed her sword through his chest and out his back. He fell to his knees, the golden light slowly going out of his eyes. Hazel jerked her sword free in a last flurry of blood, and looked around for fresh prey.
Owen moved swiftly between the Hadenmen, his lighter frame enabling him to move more freely in the muddy conditions. His sword flashed in and out, come and gone in a moment, always that little bit too fast for the augmented men who tried to crowd around him. He seemed to grow stronger and faster the longer he fought, as though something was awakening in him, until he was more than a fighter, more than a warrior. He felt invincible, like some unstoppable force of nature sent to teach the Hadenmen the error of their ways. He stamped and lunged—and then he slipped in the mud and fell.
He landed awkwardly, jarring his right elbow on something solid, and his sword flew from his momentarily numbed fingers. Immediately there were Hadenmen all around him, stabbing down at him again and again, and only their uncertain footing gave Owen the time he needed to scrabble to his feet. He shot a Hadenmen through the chest at point-blank range, and the others fell back. Owen grabbed for the knife he kept in his boot, cursing and blaspheming as he looked frantically about for his lost sword.
And then he looked up just in time to see the blunt end of the great wooden battering ram coming straight at him. Four of the Hadenmen had broken away from him to pick it up, servomotors straining loudly, and they surged forward, driving themselves and their burden through the mud and rain by sheer determination. Owen just had time to see his death coming, and then the huge end of the tree trunk hit him squarely and slammed him back against the immovable main gate.
For a moment it was like a dream. The end of the tree blotted out the light, as though night had fallen especially for him. Then he was hit hard from the front, and from behind a moment later, and it felt like the whole world was pressing down on him. He could feel his entire body, his bones and his organs, actually flattening under the impact, before things began breaking. And then pain hit him, and it wasn't like a dream at all.
His ribs cracked and gave way under the impact, collapsing inward to spear his lungs and heart. His organs were crushed and flattened. A river of blood spurted out his mouth and anus. The tree trunk swung back, but Owen stayed where he was, stuck to the main gate by his own blood. Light filled his eyes again. There was more blood, from his nose and ears and eyes. The pain was unbelievable, so bad he couldn't even think through it, trapped in the agony of that moment like a fly trapped in amber. His punctured lungs trembled in his chest, unable to draw breath in or push it out. His arms and legs were broken, white shards of bone protruding through the bloody flesh, and his face was smashed to a pulp. He slid slowly, helplessly, down the gate, leaving a thick trail of dark blood
