‘He’s got Vincent and Carter in there, Mr Verdeschi,’ one of the guards informed him. ‘He’s turned off the computers and we’ve got no contact with the Commander. We don’t know whether Mr Koenig’s...’
‘Carter got a message through to Fraser,’ Verdeschi said distractedly. ‘He and Sahn took off in Eagle Seven five minutes ago to look for Koenig – who, for all we know, is now dead..!’ He glanced impatiently above the guards’ bobbing helmets along the corridor. Helena and Maya were turning the corner at the bottom, racing towards them with the medical equipment. ‘The whole evacuation procedure’s come to a halt!’ Verdeschi continued wrathfully. ‘Because of him and his misguided...’ The right word would not come. ‘Our plans have been delayed and we now probably won’t get off Alpha before the collision takes place! We’re doomed!’
The nervous guards moved apart to allow the two women through. They arrived out of breath and white-faced. Helena promptly began unloading a syringe and loading it. She had specifically told Verdeschi not to do anything until she arrived.
‘Go for Sandor,’ she told the security chief. ‘He’s the ringleader. If we can get him, the others will be easy.’
Verdeschi nodded. Grimly, he withdrew his laser. He fired and the strong locks melted in a white-hot gob of heat. Useless now, the doors slid open and he stepped rapidly inside, throwing himself on the floor behind one of the consoles. His men followed after him in a heavy clatter of feet, guns drawn. They, too, found places to hide.
‘Give yourselves up!’ Verdeschi yelled, resetting his laser to ‘stun’ and peering round the corner of the console.
By way of answer a searing ray of light lanced past his face and blasted a hole in the floor. Ignoring it, he boldly hurled himself across the floor into a position where he could see the fat, ginger-headed man clearly. He was completely vulnerable. He took advantage of the split second delay that his opponent used in relocating him, and fired.
Knox’s angry red face paralyzed as the ray hit him. His body lit up with a surplus of energy that it couldn’t control. Then, watched by his three disciples-in-arms, he keeled inelegantly off his seat and crashed to the floor.
Quickly, the guards rushed from their places, surrounding Stevens and Cernik, both of whom had guns.
Verdeschi climbed to his feet, scowling and rubbing his shoulder. ‘You can come in now, Helena,’ he called, as he looked scornfully at the three disarmed captives. ‘We had to stun your big patient, I’m sorry to say.’ He turned to his guards and said icily, ‘Take them away.’
Helena entered, followed by Maya and a large medical team who had arrived. She began supervizing the lifting of the still unconscious forms of Carter and Vincent and other personnel off the floor to the trolleys.
She stared in misery and dismay at their battered and fractured bodies. They had been damaged far more severely than had been necessary merely to silence them. She felt most sorry for Carter who, barely hours ago had suffered the grief of a broken love affair – when Sahala had set off once more on her dangerous journey of delivery. Reflectively, she blamed herself for not having done something about Sandor sooner, when she had first spotted his instability. There was no escaping the fact that the mental welfare of all Alphans was totally her responsibility.
It was Time that had gotten to them. After the Warp, its perplexing substance had gone completely fluid once more. Its tackiness had been left like spore in the head of Sandor, and now they were hurtling like never before down their fateful and predetermined path – to their destruction.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The dark mist of unknowingness slowly cleared inside Koenig’s head. He opened his eyes on a jumbled scene of lines and blurring colours. There seemed to be an endless dark expanse of dials and gleaming colour controls, and then a large gap of blue. The controls were warm. The gap was cold.
It gradually came to him that he was sitting, twisted around in his harness, facing the torn-out wall of his Eagle Ship. Abruptly, he remembered the screaming death dive and the inhabited, alien moon they had swooped across. He wondered how he came to be still alive.
Groggily, he unstrapped himself.
By his side he heard a groan of pure despair and saw Maine, likewise harnessed, slumped forward over the flight console and stirring to rise. He reached over and with weak, unreal fingers, helped release him.
‘This thing’s liable to blow,’ he gasped when the pilot was freed. ‘On your feet.’
Maine groaned again and pressed himself up. He staggered upright. The blitzed, chaotic interior of the Eagle spun crazily around in his vision and he clutched his stomach to stop it emptying itself. ‘I can make it,’ he said slowly, unconvincingly.
‘Then let’s move.’
The two men climbed unsteadily up the sloping deck, past the gaping hole and stumbled into the Passenger Section. They saw quickly that this part of the Eagle was in an even worse condition. A tree bough of some kind had pierced the walls and its hundreds of leafy branches had blossomed inside. They pushed their way through the foliage and snagging twigs, over the detritus of displaced and scattered ship objects. The ship’s walls had been crumpled and the sturdy airlock doors broken open. From the entrance streamed more of the cold, bleak day-light.
They made their way to the buckled landing platform and gazed forlornly out.
A wild expanse of rough grassland punctuated here and there by clumps of untidy elm-like trees lay in front of them. A bright young sun shone down from somewhere behind the ship. The air was fresh and a slight cold breeze whipped their faces.
They paused momentarily, before climbing unsteadily down the steps and on to the rough turf. Half-stumbling and half-running, they fled to the shelter of a copse of trees.
They threw themselves down to rest and stared raptly at the Eagle, waiting for it to erupt. When it didn’t, weariness overcame them and they lost control of their minds, drifting back into unconsciousness.
They awoke to the sound of startled yells and terrified screams. The sun was low on the horizon and the daylight was greying. It had grown even colder and they climbed frozenly to their feet, stamping and throwing their arms around their chests to keep warm.
The sounds were growing closer. There were new ones amongst them now – women’s voices, lower-pitched, authoritative commands and the sharp, explosive cracks of whips.
They stopped exercising and crouched down behind one of the fat tree boles. From here they could see a lone, humanoid figure running frenziedly across the grassland. He was dressed in the same design of tunic as those the dead and dying companions on the parent planet had worn. In close pursuit were three Amazonian-type females.
The pursuers looked well-fed by comparison with their scrawny prey. They wore crimson skin-tight jumper suits that covered large thighs and broad chests. They wore red, calf-high boots with small cuban heels and star spurs. Red gauntlets clutched the red handles of red whips. Their hair – pure white, emerald green and jet black – streamed wildly out from behind them as they ran, their imperious breasts jutting forward, their whips cracking and exploding in showers of smoke and sparks above the head of the terrified man.
Well past his normal endurance, the man staggered on, every so often falling and rising, making his desperate way towards a large, mottled-blue column which dominated the horizon. The column rose some several hundred feet into the cloud-dotted sky. At its summit perched a huge globe model of the parent planet and they guessed intuitively that this huge column was in some way connected with the strange rectangular apparatus they had seen on the other planet. In all probability it was an advanced form of matter transmitter, transporting the luckless citizens of one world to certain death in another. They were witnessing a cruel and macabre blood sport perpetrated by the crimson women huntresses.
‘Like hounds after a fox,’ Koenig muttered.
Maine was rigid with indignation. ‘Do we just stand and watch it?’
The terrified prey gave another shriek of agony as he t
ripped and fell and the electric whip tips almost touched him.
Koenig rose to his feet from where he had been crouching. ‘No!’ he exclaimed. ‘We do not!’
He set out from behind the tree towards the trio of she-devils, followed closely by Maine. The two men drew their lasers. They split up, taking different routes to make sure that none of the scarlet terror-mongers got away.
The three women spied them and instead of turning tail they froze defiantly in a posture of confrontation, their legs apart, their hands placed arrogantly on their hips. Their beautiful faces wore expressions of extreme contempt for the two Aiphan men.
Koenig halted not far from them and stood his ground. He raised his gun threateningly towards them. He was about to announce his name and state his intentions when a sudden, blood-curdling scream from Maine distracted him. He glanced in the Medical Pilot’s direction and saw him standing in an upright position, helplessly spread-eagled against the air. He had walked head-first into an invisible force-field. His body was glowing fiercely with an intense silver-blue light. Horrified, Koenig watched his Aiphan friend hold this position for a fraction of a second, then watched him collapse into a smouldering heap of garments and flesh on the ground.
He stared round wildly at the three Amazons who were now advancing on him, their contemptuous expressions alive with a malicious humour. Their whips snaked out rapidly towards him and exploded loudly in the air round his ears. As quickly as the thin, licking whips shot out, they retracted like tongues and streaked out again, this time striking him, before his confused senses had had the time to react.
He felt a sledge-hammer blow to his system as all three electric whips discharged their current into him. When they left him this time, they left him senseless and half-dead, crumpled up on the spiky grass. Their three, vampirish wielders came and stood triumphantly over him. In unison, they placed their scarlet boots on his body as hunters place their boots on a bagged trophy, and raised their lethal weapons high in the air.
Tall sombre walls rose up into the misty ceiling of the Entran reception hall. Their sheer size and gloom cast a stern atmosphere of irrevocability over the figure of Entran prisoners cowed in regulation lines on their hands and knees below. The hall was massive and echoed to the rustlings of fabric and the occasional moans of the prisoners. Around the prisoners, who were garbed in the black and white tesselated tunics, were stationed more of the scarlet-clad Huntresses, their legs placed firmly apart, their whips hanging down by their sides, ready for immediate use. At the head of the hall, raised on an enormous emerald dais was a throne of swirling, polychrome colours. It was almost liquid-like and brilliant in its intensity of colour and visual texture. Seated in it was a woman of magnificent dazzling beauty and Machiavellian manner, fuller and more supreme in looks than the other women, crueller and more commanding in air. She was dressed in the same scarlet costume as her subjects but she was distinguished by a wide belt of sparkling jewels which encircled her waist and by other markings of superiority.
Crouched in front of her, his head slightly raised towards her, was a representative of the prisoners. He was dressed similarly to his fellow sufferers, except that he sported a yellow bird’s crest on each of his shoulders. By his side lay a prostrated prisoner whose body trembled spasmodically as though in some fearful apoplexy.
‘...and I must submit to you, Elizia,’ the crested prisoner addressed the enthroned demi-god, his strident voice echoing around the hall, ‘that the only crime this prisoner can justly be accused of is his use of the freedom of speech!’
He waved a theatrical arm at the cowering form next to him.
‘To strip a being of this right,’ he continued beseechingly, ‘be he incarcerated here on the penal planet of Entra... or be he a free man on the mother planet of Ellna, is to destroy one of the basic principles for which civilizations of all galaxies have fought.’ He paused. ‘If you condemn the prisoner, then you condemn all life everywhere.’
The monstrously bedecked woman listened and then, without a moment’s thought, pronounced in a regal, supercilious tone of voice, ‘I am touched by your eloquence, Crael... and I, too, as the Mistress of Entra, embrace the right to one’s freedom of speech. I have made this clear to each and every prisoner, including you, who has been sentenced to Entra from the Mother Planet.
‘But I have also heard testimony from others... of how the prisoner arranged secret meetings... and tried to stir this colony to insurrection, to overthrow the forces of authority. And as long as I am the ruling force, I will not tolerate any abuse of the freedom of speech... not by anyone!’
Her voice rose almost to a hysterical pitch, lashing the two figures with a cruel, sadistic retribution. She was about to pronounce sentence when she was interrupted by one of her subjects in red who entered the hall and approached her, holding out Koenig’s laser. She approached the Mistress Elizia and lay the gun on a small table in front of her.
‘The alien’s weapon, Sares?’
The woman called Sares nodded.
Elizia picked it up with jewel-encrusted fingers. ‘And the alien?’
‘In Security Ward... with Head of Security Interrogation,’ the other replied obediently. She added, ‘We brought them down gently in their craft to facilitate the Hunt and to satisfy your curiosity.’
The enthroned devil smiled and nodded her head approvingly. ‘Good. You shall be rewarded for your capture of the alien, Sares.’
Sares stiffened to attention. ‘Thank you.’
‘What of the Hunt... the prisoner?’ she asked, almost as an after-thought.
‘He almost reached the Sanctuary Column,’ Sares replied.
‘...almost,’ Elizia repeated with a smile of wicked satisfaction. Her gaze had strayed to the prostrated prisoner by Crael’s side and it seemed as though she referred to him. ‘I have no choice but to find you guilty...’
Crael got up on his knees and clasped his hands together imploringly. ‘I beseech you...’
‘To be merciful?’ she asked him icily. She smiled and reached for the Alphan laser. ‘All right, I shall be.’ She aimed the gun at the prisoner and fired it without any qualms whatsoever.
A fierce ray of concentrated light sprang from the nozzle, catching the unfortunate prisoner in the rump. He convulsed and shone in a splendid display of light energy. The light faded away and he lay still.
Elizia frowned. ‘Dead?’
‘Unconscious... stunned,’ Sares told her. ‘The gun was not set to kill.’
‘Good. He might have died instantly. That would have been too merciful.’ She turned to Crael. ‘He is also fortunate that he has no family on Ellna. There would be reprisals for his actions.’ She tossed the laser aside and pronounced savagely, ‘The Hunt for him!’
‘It’s inhuman!’ Crael cried out, wringing his hands in a gesture of grief. ‘When will you end it?’
‘Inhuman?’ she screeched. ‘A chance for freedom? To return to Ellna?’
Crael gulped in fear, but he stood his ground before her. ‘One out of a hundred survive the Hunt,’ he declared. ‘I call that inhuman!’
Elizia swept the hall full of assembled prisoners with her arm. ‘Offer any one of them the chance. See how many will accept the challenge.’
‘And I still say it’s inhuman! Barbaric! To satisfy the whims of...’ He gestured to the female Guards standing supremely around, unable to find words to vent his feelings.
Elizia cut him off with a sneer. ‘Perhaps your next defence of a prisoner will be more successful, Crael.’
Crael hung his head miserably. She was right. He had lost again. He always lost to them. ‘I doubt I will ever be successful,’ he said in a defeated tone of voice.
She became seductive. ‘You know, you only have to ask, and you can go home...’ She indicated a transmitter which was assembled at the edge of the dais. Like its receiver on Ellna it was rectangular in shape, and perfectly transparent. ‘The Trans Beam Station. I will let you step in and go back to Ellna.’
He smiled nervously, knowing that she was toying with him. He shook his head and gestured to the prisoners crouched in obeisance behind him. ‘My place is here, to help my people as best I can... We all make our own prisons... But I thank you, anyway. You kill me with your kindness.’
He backed away, leaving his unsuccessful client unconscious on the dais.
As he left her she smiled lasciviously at him, saying, ‘That’s one way I haven’t tried yet...’
The simple, hexagonal room was bare of all furnishings, except for a bench-like bed. The walls were decorated to produce a large, chequer-board effect. They were coloured luridly with orange, blue, yellow, white and black. Set in one wall, like an enormous liquid jewel, was a screen. On another wall was a solid glass, door-like partition leading through into another room of identical appearance. Lying prone on the bed was the figure of Koenig, still in his Alphan clothing and breathing shallowly. At his head was a pillow of complex circuitry and instrumentation, its wires attached to all parts of his body, feeding from him.
Two women, Elizia, and a dark, taller woman in a shiny cat-black jumper suit and gleaming black boots, watched over his unconscious form. By their side stood a trolley carrying more monitoring equipment, connected to the electronic pillow by a trail of wires. The trolley was in turn connected to wall sockets.
Silently, brutally, they activated the mind machines, and watched the pictures of the Alphan’s mind and memory flashing up on the screen above their heads. They saw Alpha, they saw Helena, they saw the planet of Ellna as Koenig had seen it only hours ago – and they knew then that he was in possession of dangerous information. They watched Maya changing from one animal into another. They watched Eagle Ships exploding and baby memories of Earth. They discovered that other Alphans had been sent from Moon Base Alpha to find him. They learnt everything about him, except his name. And after they had taken even that, they were intending to erase his mind.
Space 1999 - The Time Fighters Page 13
