“Much later, if you’ve got any sense,” said Sister Marion.
“They’re good fighters,” said Mother Beatrice reprovingly.
“They’re complete bloody psychopaths!”
“Takes one to know one, dear. And these days their . . . attitude is somewhat of an advantage.” Mother Beatrice frowned down at her hands, clasped together on the table before her. “Every time the Hadenmen come, we lose more people. My people are brave enough, and they fight well, but lepers have their limitations as warriors. Even the smallest wound can turn deadly very quickly. It’s the rain and the ever present moisture. Everything rots. Everything.”
“How long has it been since the last attack?” said Moon in his buzzing, inhuman voice.
“Three days,” said Sister Marion, pruning her green fingernails with her dinner knife. “They could come anytime.” She looked up and fixed Moon with her bright, cold eyes. “Ready for a little action, Hadenman?”
“Call me Moon. And yes, I will fight. To protect my friends. Isn’t that why anyone fights?”
There was a moment of silence that might have become uncomfortable, but it was interrupted by a polite knock at the door. Sister Marion went to answer it, and then came back to murmur in Mother Beatrice’s ear. She rose to her feet.
“You’ll have to excuse us. We’re needed at the infirmary. Make yourselves at home. We’ll talk more later.”
The room seemed very quiet after the Sister of Glory and the Saint left. Everyone looked at each other, except Hazel, who was mopping up the last traces of anything edible from her plate. Everyone else regarded her with varying shades of disgust and amusement. She glanced up and saw them looking at her.
“What? ”
“I’m impressed,” said Owen. “Really. I couldn’t eat more of that stuff if you put a gun to my head.”
“I’m hungry! And you’d better learn to get used to it; we could be here a long time.”
“Parliament will send a ship as soon as they learn we’re stranded here,” said Owen. “We’re too valuable to the war effort to be abandoned.”
Hazel shrugged. “On the other hand, we’ve made a lot of enemies in our time. Enemies who might be quite happy to see us sidelined. Face it, Owen, we’re not getting off this planet anytime soon.”
He shook his head angrily. “One thing at a time. Let’s deal with the Hadenmen first. Moon, any ideas on how we can turn the odds more in our favor?”
Moon frowned. “We have no way of knowing where the Hadenman forces are, or how large they are. We don’t know what they want, or how big a force they’re prepared to field to get it. I will think on the matter further. Now, if you will excuse me, I need some time alone.” He got to his feet.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Moon,” said Owen. “Lots of people here have no reason to love the Hadenmen.”
“I’ll be fine, Owen. I don’t need a nursemaid.” He headed for the door, not looking back. “Don’t wait up for me.”
“Watch your back!” said Owen, and then the door closed and the Hadenman was gone.
Bonnie and Midnight got to their feet. “Getting late,” said Bonnie. “Time for one last stroll before bed. These lepers are fascinating.”
“And I want to check out the fortifications, look for weak spots,” said Midnight. “See you in the morning.”
And they left too. Owen looked at Hazel. “Was it something I said?”
“For once, no. I think everyone just needs some time to themselves, Owen. For all Saint Bea’s upbeat attitude, this is still at heart a grim and depressing place. People came here to die, and just when they thought they’d made a life for themselves against all the odds, along came the Hadenmen to put the boot in. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place, Owen. We’ve cheated death many times, one way or another, but this is the place where death always wins. Maybe we’ve finally come to the one place that no one escapes from. I’m going to go and get some sleep, on a real bed with warm, dry blankets, and try not to dream. You should get some sleep too. We’re going to need all our strength when the Hadenmen return.” She got to her feet and looked around the empty room. “We should never have come here, Owen. Something bad is going to happen.”
She left the room without looking back, not bothering to shut the door behind her. Owen leaned back in his chair and stretched tiredly. But he wasn’t ready to sleep yet. Not while he was still trying to work out what the hell to do. From what he’d seen of the Mission so far, it was going to be hell to defend. Wooden walls, wooden buildings, wooden roof. The constant rain would help to suppress fires, but if the Hadenmen had access to the right accelerants, they could set fires no rain would be able to put out. Maybe that was what they’d gone to get.
The lepers seemed willing enough to fight, but they were still basically only invalid civilians with limited training. One on one they wouldn’t stand a chance. The augmented men were designed and constructed to be efficient, merciless killers. They had internal armor, steelmesh under their skin, servomotors in their muscles, inhuman speed, and built-in disrupters. It was a wonder that the Mission hadn’t fallen already. But then, a man always fought hardest when defending his home. And when he knew there was nowhere else to go.
Owen got to his feet. Hazel was right. The place stank of death. He walked slowly over to the door, still too restless to sleep. An impulse made him pull his cloak around him, and bring his hood well forward so the shadow hid his face. Perhaps if he walked among the lepers as one of them, they would speak freely in front of him, and he could learn more of the truth of the situation. He needed the truth. He couldn’t make plans in the dark.
He made his way slowly through the narrow streets and alleys of the Mission. Despite the dark and the late hour, there were people everywhere. It seemed Owen wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. He moved unhurriedly along, going nowhere in particular, being as careful as everyone else not to bump into anyone. The never ending rain drummed loudly on the wooden roof overhead. Indoors, you learned to tune out the sound, but now it was like an endless drumroll, foreshadowing the action to come. Owen found himself looking out over the compound, the only large open space inside the Mission. Torches blazed at regular intervals, casting pools of gold and amber light, surrounded by shifting shadows. People stood or sat in small groups—eating, drinking, preparing weapons, or just talking quietly. No one noticed one more cloaked and hooded figure as Owen moved to join the crowd.
He found Sister Marion and another Sister of Glory holding an impromptu class on the best ways to set booby-traps and pitfalls for use in case the Hadenmen ever got past the outer wall. The two Sisters passed a bottle of the local wine back and forth as they lectured the attentive group before them. Sister Kathleen looked more like what Owen thought of as a nun, in sweeping black robes and traditional starched wimple, but she too wore a sword on one hip and a disrupter on the other. She was a strapping woman of average height, with a man’s large, bony hands. She all but crackled with nervous energy, stalking back and forth like a trapped animal, her hand stabbing out to point at her audience when she wanted to emphasize something. She had the word LOVE tattooed on both sets of knuckles. She had a long, horsey face, a wide mouth full of protruding teeth, and a voice like an angel. Owen could have listened to her for hours. Sister Marion stood beside her like a ghastly scarecrow, interjecting the odd word or comment whenever she felt the need.
“Caltrops,” said Sister Kathleen cheerfully, holding up two nails twisted together. “However you drop them, they always land point up. And even a Hadenman won’t get far with three inches of steel rammed through the sole of his foot. Don’t forget to dip the points in fresh dung before you drop them; that’ll make the wounds fester. Every little bit helps. Now, you’ve all seen the deadfalls we’ve arranged. Memorize where the triggers are so you won’t set one off accidentally. Same with the spiked pits and the land mines we’ve improvised. And don’t forget: never hit a Hadenman when he’s down; put the boot in, it’s safer. And if you’re down, go for his hamstrings and cripple the bastard. A Hadenman may have the edge in strength and speed, but no one’s ever matched a human for sheer dirty fighting.”
“Don’t forget the nooses,” said Sister Marion.
“I was getting to the nooses!”
“A dangling noose inside the doorway of a darkened room can take out even the most experienced warrior.”
“I was going to tell them that!”
“Of course you were, dear. You carry on. Don’t mind me.”
“Thank you.”
“And if the noose doesn’t kill them immediately, yank on their ankles till their necks break.”
“Marion! Do you want to give this lecture?”
“Of course not, dear. You do it so well.”
This had the sound of a conversation that could go on for some time, so Owen left them to it. He moved on through the compound, seeing what there was to see, listening to scraps of conversation that mostly evolved around everyday things. It was as though the colonists wanted to savor their few happy memories while they still could, before everything was lost in the fighting. No one seemed particularly optimistic about the final outcome.
Owen found Colonel William Hand and Otto sitting together on a bench outside their hut, polishing their swords and quietly singing an old marine marching song. The Colonel still wore his old uniform, ragged and tattered but still scrupulously clean. His chest bore an impressive display of medal ribbons, carefully maintained. He didn’t bother with the usual cloak and hood. He had leprosy and didn’t care who knew it. His gray skin was dotted with dark patches of dead matter, and half his nose was eaten away. He might have been handsome once. It was hard to tell. He looked to be in his late fifties, a large and muscular man running now to fat. His long, dark hair was greasy and stringy, held back out of his face with a plain leather headband.
His companion Otto was a hunchbacked dwarf, barely four feet tall. His overlarge head was touched with decay here and there, and most of his hair had fallen out. He too wore a marine uniform, but it was filthy dirty and he looked like he hadn’t bathed in weeks. For a hunchbacked dwarf with leprosy, he seemed cheerful enough.
The Colonel looked up at Owen and fixed him with a cold, flat gaze. “You must be new, boy, or you wouldn’t be hanging around us. Even lepers have their pariahs. Got time to sit and talk for a while?”
“Of course,” said Owen. He sat down on the bench next to the Colonel. “May I ask what makes you a pariah here?”
The Colonel snorted. “Because I don’t think the sun shines out of Saint Bea’s ass. I don’t have any time for her peace and love nonsense. I’m a killer, boy. Bloody good at it too. Joined the marines as soon as I was able and never looked back. Never wanted anything else.”
“You seem to have had an impressive career, Colonel,” said Owen, indicating the medal ribbons.
“Bet your ass, boy. I fought in every campaign of note for the past thirty years. Killed men and aliens on a hundred worlds, first to advance and last to retreat, and loved every minute of it. No regrets, no bad dreams, no stirrings of conscience in the wee hours. Mother Bea never could understand that, and for a Saint she’s remarkably unforgiving to anyone who won’t toe the party line. She wants me to make confession, say I’m sorry and make my peace with God. Well, I’m not sorry, and I won’t say I was, and when I finally get to stand before God, I’ll look him right in the eye and say,
You made me a killer. I just did what you made me to do. Now, where’s the next enemy?
”
He laughed shortly, rooting around in the ruined half of his nose with a fingertip. “I was one of the best, but they still sent me here the moment I was diagnosed. I’m not bitter. Not really. But it came hard at the time, to give up my career for this shit-hole. Ironic, really. All the battles I fought, all the odds I beat, and in the end it wasn’t a sword or an energy blast that got me, just a stupid mindless disease, killing me by inches. Not at all how I expected to die.”
“You never expected to die,” said Otto. “You thought you were so special you’d live forever.”
“Maybe,” said the Colonel. He looked at Owen. “Don’t suppose you brought any cigars with you? No, of course not. Just as well, filthy habit anyway. But it’s one of the few things I do miss. . . . I missed the rebellion, you know. Biggest bloody war in the history of the Empire, and I never got to fight in it. Shame. I would have liked to test myself against the Deathstalker and his crew. They would have been worthy adversaries. Still, Empress or Parliament, it makes no difference in the end. Neither one is going to let us off this planet.”
“No one cares about us,” said Otto. “They’re ashamed of us. We have no place in their bright new shining Empire.” He sniffed wetly and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “ I was gengineered like this, in case you were wondering, by my parents. They ran a traveling circus, and since hunchbacked dwarves don’t tend to occur naturally anymore, they made one of their own. I was one of the stars of the show. Audiences loved to come and pity me from a safe distance. But no one ever asked me what I wanted. What my dreams were. So the minute I hit sixteen, I went straight to the nearest recruiting office and signed on. I was supposed to be a mascot, but I quickly demonstrated such a natural aptitude for killing people that I got upgraded to full service inside a year. Never looked back.”
“We fought side by side in a hundred battles,” said the Colonel. “Nasty little man. Very good with a gutting knife. And when I came here, he came with me. He didn’t have leprosy then. A good friend, but dumb as shit.”
“True,” said Otto. “Very true.”
“Thank God for the Hadenmen. They gave us purpose again. At least now I have a real enemy to vent my spleen on. And a chance to die a warrior’s death instead of rotting away, day after day. And best of all, after months of open disapproval for my past wicked ways, Saint Bea had to come to me to help train her people how to fight. Must have stuck in her craw something fierce, but she did it. Came and asked us right in front of everybody.”