Deathdancer watched Rayshade gradually spread and shred the toy fleet, his lingers flying to keep pace with the series of orders. But the arrowhead was disintegrating fast. He wondered what the toys were waiting for, but he knew that from their point of view there was no hurry.
His eyes swung crazily as he tried to assimilate all the information on the screen at once. It had not been hard when the fleets were in neat patterns, but by now it was almost impossible. The planar representation of a spherical viewpoint was being reduced quickly to incomprehensibility.
There was far more silver on the screen than gray, and the silver dots seemed individually much larger. While he watched, the silver swarm grew and grew.
They’re attacking in force, he thought. They’ve picked out the Falcor and they’re testing its strength. They’re risking a lot. If Cain can only…
But Rayshade could not. The Beast fleet had drifted too far. Its synchronization was almost gone. Rayshade’s orders flooded from the speaker above his head and—like everyone else—he obeyed with all the speed he could muster. But they had taken as much from the toys as they could. They had won all the advantage they were ever going to get. Now it was only a matter of killing, and the Beasts would have to kill twice as fast to have any chance at all.
The battleship lurched, and although there was no telltale splash of white across the screen, Deathdancer knew that they had been hit.
“Tail section,” announced a voice from behind. “Edge of screen. Shield distorted but no damage. We took it comfortably.” The voice was calm, but unmistakably triumphant.
The silver dots seemed to fill the flat screen. They seemed incredibly large, and the gunners could have had little difficulty finding targets. Some of the pale dots were unusually large in size too, but they did not multiply in number. The Felides were giving him all the support they could, but each of the tiny ships had its own battle to fight. No one wanted to fly a lone ship into a cluster of enemies. The battleship was well nigh on its own.
Deathdancer forgot Rayshade and began to fly the ship the way he wanted it to go. He eased the speed control up and down a little, but it gave him little or no advantage, and the power banks yelped their displeasure every time he touched the lever. There were simply too many toys. They were always flocking around him no matter what he did.
And yet the Falcor kept on flying.
Deathdancer wished that the gunners were up in the control room with him so that he could hear them hit and miss, could feel the flood of his power being poured out at his attackers.
The ship rocked and bounced and he switched keys madly, writhing the ship in and out of what appeared to be a sea of omega-energy.
“Two guns out,” reported the man in charge of the intraship communication. “More distortion to the shields. We’re wide open out on the wings. But they can’t get to the body of the ship. We’re hitting back. They’re losing ships fast.
They can afford it, thought Deathdancer grimly; and then added, but not forever. If we can keep on taking this punishment, we can win this battle.
But that was the height of optimism, and he knew it. The Beast fleet was well spread now, in loose formation if any at all. While the battleships held the enemy and made inroads into their strength, the main body of the fleet would be massacred.
We need a miracle, said Deathdancer to himself. We need ships in tight formation to cut the toy fleet up, hurry them and keep them clear of the Beasts while we have a chance to regroup. If only Skywolfs men could somehow bunch up…
And then the remnants of the ghost fleet came out of the Time Gap.
Deathdancer couldn’t see, and neither could Cain Ray-shade. Too much was packed onto their warped screens that was of immediate concern, and they were more interested in silver dots than pale ones.
But Daniel Skywolf, with more normal screens, saw them as he wheeled on the edge of the battleground. The sun of Saraca was large and red in the comer of his control screen, and drifting out of the blur came nearly a hundred ships in perfect formation. He wondered how any fraction of the Beast fleet could have gained the time to reform so well, and when he saw them attack, he wondered even more.
In a slim arrowhead formation, the eighty ships soared into the Saraca system. Their coordination was superb, and for a moment the arrogant elegance of the sweep put even the toys to shame. A mere handful of ships tearing into a fleet nearly a hundred times as large with such a glorious flourish could only be the work of one man.
It’s Stormwind! screamed Skywolfs mind. Stormwind!
CHAOS’S STORY CONTINUED
At the top of the staircase, a long way beyond the metal door, we found a large, cylindrical room. There was bright light here, not the apologetic dimness of the slanted corridors. We paused warily to look around, still huddling at the head of the stair in case there should be toys waiting for us. But if the toys had been warned by the death of one of their number, we should never have got to the head of the stair.
The room seemed full of litter. Perhaps it had begun to accumulate while the room was in use, but it seemed evident that for some time, it had simply been brought from elsewhere and dumped. Piles of metal and plastic debris were strewn all over the floor. There were no clearly defined paths for working or walking, nor any sign of complex machinery. There were not even any tools that I could identify. We moved forward gingerly, trying not to step on anything.
There were two doors set into the wall, not quite opposite but with a lot of wall in between them. There was also a spiral staircase near the wall, leading up through the ceiling to the next floor.
Darkscar and Comarre slid stealthily over to one of the doors, and opened it to glance through a slim crack into the room beyond. Darkscar shut it again and came slowly back to where the rest of us waited, with Comarre behind him.
“Machinery,” murmured Darkscar. “Production line for toys. No sign of life.”
“Up?” I asked. He nodded.
With ostentatious caution, we ascended the spiral staircase in single file. With our strenuous efforts to maintain absolute silence, every scrape of boot leather against metal sounded horribly loud.
I was leading the way, with Comarre immediately behind me and the others filing up one by one. I paused, as my head came level with the ceiling, to peer over the edge of the floor into the room above. It was precisely the same shape but considerably smaller, and its walls were metal and not rock. I presumed that we were out of the body of the mountain and into the tower itself.
I craned my neck back to look up. As far as I could see, the staircase went on forever, although the tight spiral made it difficult to judge. I guessed that it would go all the way to the top of the tower and wondered when it would be best to get off. There were more doors in this room but nothing else of any interest. I glanced down at Darkscar, who still stood on the floor below, but he couldn’t see and couldn’t offer any guidance. I went on climbing, for want of anything better to do.
I was almost up to the ceiling again when one of the doors opened and a toy walked through.
I froze. I was perched in mid-air with a series of metal rungs between myself and the toy. Comarre, below me, had no such protection for the greater part of his great height. Below him was Pia, also clearly visible. The others were out of sight down the staircase.
The toy was unarmed. It paused for just a moment, doing nothing but looking and thinking. Comarre struggled to get his gun round so that he could aim and fire, but neither I nor the toy waited for him. The robot didn’t panic, and it didn’t stay to be shot at. It stepped smartly back through the door and slammed it shut. Comarre’s shot—far too late—dented the door but did no good.
I was already running upward, anxious to be anywhere except where the toys thought I was. Comarre followed me and Pia followed the Falcorian. The rest presumably got off on their own level. I couldn’t see.
I kept going up the staircase, but Comarre decided that he would feel safer off it and jumped away at the next fl
oor. I caught one glimpse of Pia’s face as she saw me disappearing into the distance, and I didn’t know what to do. I daren’t shout to tell her, and I was glad to see that she made up her own mind quickly and followed Comarre.
There was only one more level to the stair, and as far as I could see, that led to the dome of the tower. The level I was on at present seemed absurdly exposed, and my first thought was to get off it. I was on a kind of balcony running round a big room containing power banks, cables and machinery of several kinds. I heard the sound of battle below, and toys came running into the vast room. I leapt promptly from the stairway, found myself face to face with a door, and went through it precipitously. I found myself in a corridor which ran both ways away from the door. I picked a direction at random and moved. A right turn and a left turn at the end of the corridor failed to take me anywhere safer or more interesting.
Finally, rifle pointed in front of me, ready to fire, I kicked open a door and went through it, finger poised on the trigger.
I was back on the same balcony, somewhat further round the wall. I looked out over a sea of storage batteries, distributors, switch consoles and instrument panels. The whole lot seemed to be grouped around one tall, impressively complicated machine with glass sides and polished metal all over the place. It had a colossal power bank that would have lifted a spaceship as if it were a feather.
There were running figures all over the floor, seven of them. Comarre and Pia had wound up in here, and somehow Diall had contrived to join them. They were fighting four toys, only one of them armed, and that one only with a small projectile weapon.
One toy had hold of Comarre’s gun, and the two were circling rapidly, both holding on with both hands and trying to wrench it free. The toy was winning, but Comarre was a big, determined man and was not going to be easily dislodged. Comarre’s hand was still inside the trigger guard, and so the toy had the additional problem of making sure that the gun was not pointed where it could do any damage.
Diall was backed up against one of the consoles, spraying beams as much as he dared without risk to the other two. Three toys were doing their level best to keep clear of both Diall and Pia, who was similarly blazing away with reckless abandon. At the same time, the toys were trying to attack. One of the toys was concentrating its entire attention on Pia and was backing her away from Diall. She showed a marked inability to hit it, despite the fact that she was trying hard. Diall was just about holding the armed toy and its compatriot and had already hit both but damaged neither.
A door opened in the far wall and a toy burst in, carrying a rifle and aiming as it came. I hit it dead center with a quick burst and sent it reeling backward, minus its own gun. But the range was long and the gun was adjusted too low. The toy wasn’t dead by any means.
Something splashed off the wall behind me, and I dived to the floor. I couldn’t see who had fired—it wasn’t the toy with the pistol—but I didn’t want to be hit. I began to scramble along the balcony on hands and knees.
Comarre went spinning away as the toy which was struggling for his rifle finally made its strength felt. But the toy was also reeling off balance as the gun was freed from Comarre’s grip, and it moved backward just as Pia retreated quickly from her oncoming assailant. The two met with a glancing impact, and both wheeled completely off balance. Pia swung her rifle in a low, vicious arc, holding it by the butt in her right hand. The barrel clanged harmlessly from the toy’s midriff. The toy who had been following the girl dived in.
Diall cut its feet away. I shot the toy with Comarre’s rifle, and this time there was no question about its returning to the fight. Toy and gun flared briefly and dropped. The toy with the pistol took advantage of Diall’s diversion to shoot him. Diall wasn’t quite quick enough to cover himself, but the toy died too, bathed in a long burst of omega radiation. The other two toys saw which way the fight was going and backed quickly away toward the door. It was still open, and someone was covering them from the corridor outside. Only a hand holding a pistol was visible, but it was a man’s hand.
I heard the bullets splatter against the wall uncomfortably close to my head, and I jumped off the balcony onto a huge metal power bank.
Comarre ran toward me as one of the retreating robots gathered the gun which the other had dropped when I had fired at it. Pia was still kneeling on the floor, trying to shoot the toy. I added the power of my gun, and both beams scored direct hits, while the shot which the toy launched at Comarre went wide by a good three feet.
I jumped to the floor, and we dashed for the door which—so far as we knew—was unguarded.
Once again, we were in a corridor and running. Comarre threw open one door and closed it again. At the end of the corridor there was a right-angled turn with no option. As we went round it, toys appeared behind us—two of them at least. They were armed with rifles that looked bigger and more powerful than ours. The one I carried must be all but dead by now, and the way Pia had been using hers, it couldn’t have been much better.
We hesitated as we approached the first door but accelerated again. That proved to be a mistake. The door flew open as we hurtled past. It opened our way, hiding whoever was behind it and protecting him from our fire. Simultaneously, the next door in the corridor—which was on the opposite side—opened into us, again shielding whoever had opened it.
I dared not give the trap a chance to close. I increased the velocity of my run and hurled myself at the opening door, crashing into it with my shoulder. I hurt myself but had the desired effect upon the door. It slammed into the toy which had opened it and sent it skidding down the corridor. A surprisingly fleet-footed Pia darted past me and sprayed it with fire from point-blank range while I struggled back to my feet. I grabbed the door and pulled the lumbering Comarre round it, shoving him into the room without bothering to look into it. Pia skipped back and dived through. With one glance at the other door, I slammed it shut and turned round, expecting to find Pia and Comarre.
Instead, what felt like a section of iron bar hit me in the face and sent me crashing back into the metal door. My eyes were not damaged, but I stopped seeing for a moment or two.
When I could see again I blinked away the tears. I saw Pia crumpled up, looking as dead as any corpse, with blood flowing from her head. I assume she had met with the same reception as I had. Her rifle lay beneath her body. Comarre stood to one side, motionless, also looking dazed and bewildered.
There was a toy standing beside the door, just bending to pick up the rifle which its companion, now dead in the corridor, must have dropped.
Heljanita the toymaker was standing facing me, with a pistol in his right hand. It was covering Comarre, but it was unmistakably pointed at me.
THE GHOSTS ON DESPAIR
The battle of Saraca raged a hundred and fifty light years away—ten thousand ships in mortal combat. But the battle of the Time Gap still went on, involving less than five hundred, shooting to the bitter end in an unequal struggle centered on the purple sun of Planet Despair.
Outside the system, Stormwind had regathered the remnants of the scattered fleet, abandoned by the toys when the more urgent matter of the Confederacy fleet called them to Saraca. Even now, the eighty ghost ships were moving slowly toward the edge of the Time Gap. Storm-wind might have helped the remainder of the ghost ships. It was not that he did not realize the minor skirmish was still on, or that he thought the ghosts could take care of themselves. It was simply that the lure of the larger battle was much greater. Stormwind thought always on the grand scale, and so did the other Stormwind, snatched out of another time dimension. It may not be the test of a wise man that he should always attack the strongest opponent, but it is a common characteristic of heroes.
And so a hundred ghost ships were left to fight alone, without the opportunity to align even if they could win the time.
Their battle was a losing one, but there was no question of scattering and running. Whether it was because they were warriors, or simply because they were illusio
ns of the Time Wave, with no pretension to life, they were prepared to fight until they died.
But the arena of the battle had to change. Space battle in the Time Gap was a laborious and wasteful procedure. It placed too heavy a premium on numbers, and there was no advantage at all in skill.
So the ghosts decided to land and continue the battle in the twilight zone of Planet Despair.
The ghosts landed first, by a good three or four minutes, in a ragged mob strung over three miles or more of the banks of the River of Tears. They were in the evening zone rather than the twilight zone, and the river stretched one way into clearer daylight and the other way into sunset and night.
The ghosts seemed peculiar, faded creatures as they walked the muddy banks of the wide, sluggish river. The expressions on their faces were weirdly shadowed in the dim, violet light. Such expressions implied that it was they, and not the land they walked, who were haunted.
The toys landed in more orderly ranks, in a great arc trapping the ghosts between themselves and the river. They swarmed from their snub-nosed ships like silver beetles, pouring over the mud flats and marshes. Their perfect, mirrorlike surfaces reflected the dim light and made them perfect targets as they shone in the treacherous dimness.
Meanwhile, the ghosts spread themselves to defend their position. They made very poor targets—at least to human eyes, and probably to the toys as well. They blended well with the drab, stricken background where the sun neither rose nor set, and all that grew were the spectral, half-alive flowers which could blossom only in perpetual shadow and did not love the light.
The many colored sky and the turbid waters of the River of Tears marked the boundaries of the new fight. Planet Despair was a perfect stage for a war of extinction. And both toys and ghosts knew that neither side would take to space again unless the other was destroyed.
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