Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny Read Free

remembered where his mind had gone. He only had to concentrate and he could feel the path to the Blood Runner homeworld stretching away before him, calling him on. All he needed was a ship. If Hazel was still alive, he would rescue her, and he would make the Blood Runners pay in blood and fire for taking her. And if she was dead…
    He would set the whole damned Obeah Systems afire, to blaze forever in the dark as Hazel's funeral pyre.
    Outside the Mission, the scarlet and crimson jungle flourished. Black-barked trees rose up from a sea of constantly moving vegetation, all of it blushing various shades of red, from shining purples to disturbingly organic pinks. The
    jungle on Lachrymae Christi was more than usually alive, and varyingly sentient, and spent most of its time warring on itself (except in the rutting season), but all the barbs and thorns drew back as Tobias Moon walked among them. He was their one true beloved and friend, the only one in the Mission who could make mental contact with the single great consciousness of the whole planet's ecosystem: the Red Brain. Which would have been enough to make practically anyone somewhat big-headed; but Moon was a Hadenman, and a survivor of the Madness Maze, and so he took it in his stride. If he thought about it at all, he thought of himself as a gardener, on a somewhat larger than usual scale.
    At the moment, he was overseeing the felling of trees, to provide much needed lumber for the Mission repairs. The Red Brain had given the human community permission to take what was needed, and did what it could to make the job easier by pulling back the more dangerous and obstructive vegetation in the area. Moon oversaw as much of the felling as possible, just in case of misunderstandings, but so far everything was going smoothly. He consulted with the Red Brain, gave the orders on where the trees were to be taken from, and Sister Marion stalked stiff-leggedly back and forth, making sure his instructions were followed to the letter. No one argued with Sister Marion. A Sister of Glory, a warrior nun, and a complete bloody psychopath, her stick-thin figure was seemingly everywhere at once. Striding about in her long black dress of tatters and emerald evening gloves, she made a formidable figure, and she knew it. Her face was hidden under stark white makeup, with rouged cheeks and emerald lips, and she topped it all off with a tall black witch's hat, complete with flapping purple streamers. Let a leper shirk his work, or try to sneak off for a quiet sit-down and a crafty smoke, and within seconds Sister Marion's harsh voice would be blaring right in
    his ear, driving him back to work with terrible oaths and blasphemies. Somehow they sounded so much more convincing when they came from a nun.
    Felling the tall wide trees took a lot of time and hard work, made even more miserable by the constant falling rain, but the great dark trees still went crashing to the ground with slow regularity. No one knew if the Grendels or the Hadenmen might come again, but everyone knew they'd all feel much more secure when the Mission was whole again. So the lepers toiled in the pouring rain, day after day, and the trees came crashing down. The red-leafed branches were laboriously cut away, and then the surrounding vegetation would move in to pick up and transport the massively heavy tree trunks to where they were needed. The Red Brain was almost pathetically eager to be of use to its new friends. It had been alone for so very long, until Moon established contact with it.
    Owen made his way through the scarlet and crimson jungle to join Moon. He looked intent and thoughtful and didn't seem to even notice the pouring rain. The lepers nodded and bowed as he passed, and turned to watch him go. There was new strength and purpose in him, and they could sense it. So could Moon. He fixed Owen with his faintly glowing golden eyes and raised a single eyebrow.
    "I take it a ship of some sort is on its way?"
    "Got it