Mother Beatrice pushed in beside Owen. “What is it, sir Deathstalker? What’s happening out there?”
“Damned if I know. But at a guess, I’d say someone or something is kicking Hadenmen ass. And doing a damn good job of it.”
“Could they be reinforcements? Marines perhaps?”
“I don’t think so,” said Hazel. “The attackers don’t seem to be using guns. And they don’t move like anything human. Are there any creatures on this planet that we don’t know about, Mother Beatrice?”
“No. Nothing at all.”
“I have never heard a Hadenman scream before,” said Owen. “What could be so deadly, so terrible, than even the Hadenmen are afraid of them?”
“Well, you could always go out and take a look, but if you do, you’re going on your own,” said Hazel firmly. “I’m not putting one foot outside this wall until there’s enough light to see what I’m aiming at.”
“The Hadenmen have disrupters,” said Mother Beatrice. “It doesn’t seem to be doing them any good, does it?”
The tumult in the jungle suddenly broke off, the last few screams choked off. The crashing and the thrashing stopped, and there was no sign of movement anywhere. The night was completely still, and the Mission’s defenders stood silently on the catwalk, listening to nothing but the crackling of torches, the endless pattering of rain on the roof, and their own massed breathing. The jungle was dark and calm, holding its secrets within.
“Well,” said Owen finally. “At a guess, I’d say that whatever it was, it’s over now. I think we’d better post double guards for tonight, on three-hour shifts. Everyone else, go get some sleep. Just because a few Hadenmen apparently got their just deserts, it doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t be facing a whole army of the bastards out there tomorrow.”
“Shouldn’t we send someone out to check for bodies?” said a voice farther down the catwalk.
“After you,” said Hazel, and snorted, unimpressed, when there was no response.
“Any bodies can wait till the morning,” said Mother Beatrice. “Everything can wait till the morning. The Deathstalker’s right; post the extra guards, and everyone else get some sleep.”
And since no one ever argued with Saint Bea, the watchers slowly dispersed, going to find what rest they could before morning. Owen and Hazel headed for the nearest steps, and ran into Bonnie Bedlam and Midnight Blue coming the other way.
“A good performance,” said Bonnie. “I felt like applauding.”
“Don’t mind her,” said Midnight. “She’s just being herself. What do you think just hit the Hadenmen?”
“I couldn’t make out much,” said Owen. “But what I did see seemed almost . . . familiar.”
“Anyone who kills Hadenmen is fine with me,” said Hazel. “I mean, come on; what could be worse than an army of augmented men?”
“I have a horrible suspicion we’re going to find out, come the morning,” said Midnight. “At least the Hadenmen were a known quantity. We could make plans against them. Now . . .”
“Right,” said Bonnie. “The enemy of my enemy isn’t always bound to be my friend. Especially if they’re the Enemies of Humanity.”
Hazel looked at her sharply. “Shub? You think there are Shub forces out there?”
“What else could take out a force of Hadenmen so easily? You ask me, that jungle is full of Ghost Warriors and Furies.”
“I want to go home,” said Hazel.
“But what the hell would Shub want here?” said Owen exasperatedly. “There’s nothing here!”
“Except the Red Brain,” said Moon, emerging suddenly from the gloom. “I can feel its presence more and more strongly all the time.”
“Red . . .” said Bonnie. “Could it be some part of the jungle? Some plant that developed intelligence?”
“It’s vast,” said Moon. “Very large and very complex, and utterly alien. What I can detect of its slow thoughts makes no sense at all. All I can be sure of is that it’s very dangerous. And it’s slowly becoming aware of our presence. If I was a little more certain of my humanity, I think . . . I’d be scared.”
“But what is it?” said Hazel.
“It’s the Red Brain,” said Moon. “And if it’s as powerful and as dangerous as I think it is, then I think Haden or Shub would be right to commit any number of troops here, either to seize it or destroy it.”
“But then . . . why are they attacking the Mission?” said Owen.
“We’re just in the way,” said Moon. “I don’t think Haden or Shub is in the mood to share its prize.”
He turned and walked back into the gloom, and was soon gone. Hazel glared after him. “I think I preferred him when he was just inhuman. He was much less irritating.”
“He’s certainly picked a hell of a time to go mystical on us,” said Owen. “Maybe we should send him to Saint Bea, and see if she can get some sense out of him.”
“The Red Brain . . .” said Bonnie. “Sounds like one of those evil criminal masterminds from the old holo serials when I was just a kid. Maybe we should put out a call to the Grim Gray Avenger to come and save us.”
“Did you have those shows on your world?” said Midnight. “I was always a big fan of his.”
“Yeah!” said Hazel. “I had all his tapes, and his special decoder ring, the one you had to send away for. . . .”
Owen left them chattering happily together, and went off to get some sleep before he fell down. Saving his own life had taken a lot out of him. And he had a strong feeling that when morning came, and he finally saw what was waiting outside the Mission, he wasn’t going to like it at all.
Dawn came suddenly on Lachrymae Christi, right on schedule. Everyone who could pack themselves onto the catwalks was there when the sunlight suddenly forced its way past the clouds, throwing back the gloom, and the view outside the Mission appeared again. And there, standing still and silent in the rain, in the clearing, all the way around the Mission, were rows upon rows of Grendel aliens. Owen looked dumbly down from the wall, his mouth dry, and could all but feel the confidence going out of the Mission’s defenders.
Grendels. Gengineering killing machines from the Vaults of the Sleepers, held in suspended animation for unknown centuries, or perhaps even millennia, reborn again into an unprepared universe. Living horrors with spiked crimson armor that was somehow a part of them, and steel teeth and claws. Deadly, remorseless, invincible killers, they existed only to destroy, programmed by their unknown creators in all the subtle arts of slaughter. Shub had looted hundreds of thousands of them from the Vaults of the Sleepers, and no one had ever seen any of them again. Until now.
“That’s it,” said Hazel grimly. “It’s official. Things just got worse.”
“Are they really so much more dangerous than the Hadenmen?” said Mother Beatrice.
“We stood a chance against the Hadenmen,” said Owen, almost bitterly. “I’ve killed any number of augmented men. I only ever killed one Grendel, and it very nearly killed me. It took my hand. I still have nightmares. And now there are thousands of them out there.”
“Swords won’t stop them,” said Hazel. “A direct hit with a disrupter only slows them down, unless you hit one of its very few vital spots. They were created to be unstoppable. We are in deep shit, people.”
Mother Beatrice turned to Sister Marion at her side. “Tell everyone to arm themselves. Even the wounded. Get everyone who can stand to defensive positions. Reactivate all the booby-traps and arm the explosives.” Sister Marion nodded grimly, her tall black hat bobbing, and hurried off.
“Explosives?” said Owen.
“A last resort,” said Mother Beatrice. “They’re all linked together in one place, enough to take out the whole compound. A last gesture of defiance if it’s obvious there’s no other way.”
“Put someone in charge of the button who doesn’t panic easily,” said Hazel. “Because we’re going to do our best to give these bastards a good run for their money. Right, Owen?”
“Right,” he said, flexing the fingers of the hand he’d regrown. “But if you do have a direct line to the good Lord, Mother Beatrice, now would be a really good time to put in a claim for a miracle.”
Mother Beatrice smiled. “Every legend has its ending, sir Deathstalker, and every hero falls at last, but if that’s all that’s left to us, let us at least die well. God expects no less. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must return to the infirmary. I think I’m going to be needed there.”
She left, her back perfectly straight, and people made way for her as she passed, and bowed respectfully.
“She’d have made one hell of a warrior,” said Hazel.
“Sure,” said Owen. “She’s always been a fighter in her own way. The mild-mannered don’t tend to last long enough to become living Saints.”
“Grendels,” said Hazel bitterly. “Why did it have to be Grendels? At least we stood a chance against the Hadenmen.”
“It isn’t over till the fat lady croaks,” said Owen. “If nothing else, let’s see how many of them we can take with us.”
There were startled yells from other people on the catwalk, and Owen and Hazel turned back to see the Grendels come rushing forward as one, triggered at last by some unknown signal. They surged in from all sides at once, advancing in utter silence, crossing the wide clearing in a few seconds. They threw themselves against the great wooden wall, hammering on it till the whole length of the wall sounded like a giant drum. A fusillade of disrupter fire stabbed down, punching holes through the crimson armor, but the Grendels didn’t fall. Their heavy spiked fists tore chunks out of the thick black wood, and the wall shuddered under the impact. Some Grendels came scrambling up the wall, steel talons and claws digging deep into the wood as they climbed, steel teeth grinning mercilessly. Owen leaned over the edge and shot one of the Grendels through its broad, heart-shaped head. It convulsed and fell backward, arms and legs still grabbing at nothing. It hit the ground hard and lay still, and the other Grendels swarmed right over it.
Everyone with a gun was on the catwalks now, and the roar of so many discharging energy weapons was deafening. The rain burst into clouds of steam, and Grendels fell everywhere. But in the end there just weren’t enough guns, and far too many Grendels, and when the steam cleared, and the defenders lowered their exhausted guns, the Grendels were still surging forward and scrambling up the wall. The disrupters were useless till their energy crystals recharged, and a lot could happen in two minutes. So the next step was bow and arrow. The archers stepped forward, leaned precariously out over the wall, and let fly. Every arrow struck its target and glanced harmlessly away. And that just left steel. The Mission’s defenders lifted swords and axes and farm implements with newly sharpened edges, and waited for the enemy to come to them.
The Grendels scrabbled up and over the outer wall in one great boiling wave, red as blood, savage as Satan, and threw themselves upon the catwalk defenders. Swords flashed and axes chopped, only to rebound helplessly from living crimson armor. The Grendels tore their way through fragile human flesh, killing everything that came within reach. A Grendel plunged its spiked hand into a leper’s belly and tore out a handful of guts. Steel teeth closed on throats and faces. Screaming men fell from the high catwalk, hit the ground hard, and never moved again. Some jumped rather than face the Grendels. Blood spilled everywhere, and the air was full of screams.
Outside, in the rain, Grendels smashed their way through the wall repairs and barricades, and poured through the wall in an unstoppable flood. Men and women ran screaming everywhere, but the Grendels ran faster.
Owen Deathstalker swung his sword double-handed, and sometimes the edge would cut through the crimson armor, and sometimes it wouldn’t. The sheer strength of his blows was enough to send the Grendels staggering backward, but he couldn’t hurt them. Hazel d’Ark fought at his side, darting and dodging in the space available on the catwalk, searching for weak spots, thrusting the point of her sword into exposed joints and twisting it, and all to no avail. Like Owen, her strength was enough to keep the Grendels at bay, but that was all. Owen tried knocking the Grendels off the catwalk with sweeping blows of his arm, but even the long drop to the hard ground below didn’t seem to bother them. And step by step Owen and Hazel were driven back, while their merely human fellow defenders died around them, and they could do nothing to save them. Soon the catwalk was littered with the dead and the dying, and slick with rivers of blood that dripped from the edges of the catwalk in another endless rain. And still more Grendels came swarming over and through the wall.
“Fall back! Fall back!” yelled Colonel William Hand, down in the compound. “Fall back to the inner redoubt, and let the booby-traps do their work!”
The surviving lepers on the catwalk turned and ran, crowding down the narrow stairways, the Grendels falling on those at the back. Owen and Hazel continued to retreat slowly, trying to buy the lepers near them some time. A Grendel ducked under the arc of Owen’s blade and went for his throat. Owen lashed out instinctively, and his fist smashed through the heart-shaped head, splintering the armor. The Grendel convulsed as Owen seized a handful of its brains and ripped them out of its skull. The creature spun helplessly in place, until its fellows pulled it down and trampled it underfoot.
“Nice touch,” said Hazel, just a little breathlessly.
“Yeah,” said Owen. “Think I broke my bloody hand.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re cut off from the stairs.”
“Then we’ll just have to jump.”
“The fall will kill us!”
“We’re not that lucky. Jump!”
They beat aside the nearest Grendels, avoided the snapping jaws, ran to the edge of the catwalk, and threw themselves out into the air. It was a long way down, and for a few wonderful moments it was almost like flying. And then they hit the ground hard, driving the breath from their lungs. Up above them, the catwalk was completely overrun.
Owen forced himself back onto his feet through sheer willpower, and grabbed Hazel by the shoulder, pulling her up. There were people and Grendels running everywhere. A steel smile lunged for Hazel’s throat. She grabbed the Grendel with both hands, whipped it up over her head, and threw it into the nearest concentration of Grendels. They went down in a pile of thrashing limbs. Owen and Hazel ran for the inner redoubt, the hall-sized communications center set up as the only practical place to retreat to if the outer defenses were breached.