by Ryder Stacy
No one else had ever seen the Chessman in the window. But Rockson believed Rosa’s story. “Well, assuming it’s a window, and that Chessman is there in the Tower, I still want to confront him personally. I have to know the secret of the Veil, how to turn it off. I have to know who the Chessman is. I know his voice from somewhere. And most of all, I must be sure he’s killed—I will kill him myself.” A glow came into the eyes of the Doomsday Warrior. “And I think I know how to get to him.
“First we must get into the compound. Besides the wall and the guards, there are the elaborate detectors to knock out.
“You and your people will use your greatest talent—stealth. It won’t be a frontal assault—we will garrote the guards, cut the detectors first—you know where the electric cables are?”
Barrelman nodded. “They are aboveground—except for a short segment that runs underground. There’s no way to kill the circuit—there are backup systems all over. The Chessman takes no shortcuts when it comes to his security.”
“Maybe you can’t kill it, but could you interrupt it? A few seconds, a minute, and I can get past it.”
Barrelman thought about it for a moment. “I think we could do that, yes. We know where the circuit breakers are. It would have to be precisely timed, of course. And you would have to move very fast.”
“Just take care of your end of the business,” Rockson said, “and I will get to the Tower.”
“How do you plan to enter the Tower?”
“By climbing it. The greatest talent a Coloradan has is climbing. I’ve scaled peaks that make the tower look like a toothpick. Admittedly, I had good equipment. Pitons, rope—and there had been some handholds. But I can do it.”
“And if something goes wrong—what about escape?”
Rockson’s face was hard as steel. “Nothing will go wrong, Barrelman.” He let the words sink in, then went on. “Now, you must tell me everything you know that isn’t spelled out on the drawings. How many guards. Where they’re positioned.”
Barrelman pointed to the places on the blueprints that were fortified pillboxes. Four corners of the compound had circular, walled structures for surveillance. The guards had been seen entering and leaving the enclosures, according to Rosa. “The Professor, he wrote it down. Here . . .” She pulled out a scrap of paper from a jacket pocket. “Here it is—the Professor gave me this schedule. He insisted that I keep it—for the time of the uprising. He believed that time would come. He was a great man.”
Rockson looked at the scrawled schedule. The Professor, whoever the hell he had been, had been thorough. He had tracked the movements long enough to notice that it was different on even weeks than on odd weeks. This was the second week of September; that meant, according to the scrawl, that guards were relieved at 6 P.M., 2 A.M., and 10 A.M. “Two A.M.,” Rock said, “We have to be as close as we can to the enclosures at Two A.M. That leaves just an hour to show you all how to conduct guerilla warfare. Long enough to learn the rudiments of garroting, and knifing a man so that he doesn’t scream.”
Barrelman, when he had finished, said, “It will work. But your clothes are unsuitable! Darryl—bring the White King’s garment!”
Darryl brought in a plain white karate-gi type of suit that he presented to Rockson with bowed head. “We made it for you, for when you came to release us from our bondage, as predicted by the Founder.” Rockson inspected the suit. It was large enough and loose fitting, a suitable climbing garment. He quickly shucked his own clothes in a corner and donned the outfit, not for its symbolic importance to the Runners, but because the suit, being white, was good camouflage for climbing the tower. It fit perfectly, oddly enough.
“Okay,” Rock ordered. “Get to your positions.” He had taught them what they needed to know. Practice would come in the field. The Runners filed out of the cavern room and through the sewers to positions close to the enclosures, and one man in front of each of the four teams opened up the manhole cover enough to see out. Exactly on schedule, the guards opened up the thick doors of the enclosures and new guards approached to relieve them. Rockson was relieved to see from his vantage point that there were only three occupants to his target. With the three replacements, that made six at each corner of the compound. He hoped to hell the other teams had learned their lessons well.
“Here goes nothing,” he whispered.
The guards were slow, and unprepared for the lightning attack, for the steel slamming into their backs, for the wire necklaces that strangled the life out of them. And through the doors of the four corner enclosures that guarded the Tower compound grounds, not guards, but free men, entered.
All of this was done in a matter of a minute or two. Rockson peered through the gunslit in his compound, and saw the winking flashlight beam in the gunslits across the way. He returned the prearranged signal. Sinking down in relief next to the bulge-eyed corpse of one of the guards, he waited for the moment that the compound’s intruder detectors would be momentarily cut off. That job was being done underground, by Darryl and his crew. The circuit breakers would be employed for a minute, no more. Hopefully, the personnel in the Tower would just think it an anomaly, if they were even looking at their readouts. Perhaps they too were as complacent as the corner guards.
Or maybe they were waiting for him.
Fifteen
Rockson opened the door on the Tower side and started his run. He ducked down low and cut away from his brave band of men. He knew that many might die to cover his assault, that Bravery hides its noble face behind the most unlikely appearances. The men had acted like trained, combat-steeled Freefighters, not like rag-clad derelicts. They had only needed a leader, a White King, to rally them to fight! Rock had instructed Barrelman to keep them hidden, ready to fire if he was detected.
As he slipped across the mall surrounding the Tower, he clung to the slightest cover. A bush, whose shadow he blended with, contained a spiderweb-fine trip-wire that would have triggered an alarm—if someone without his ninja-sense had passed that way. But no wires, no mere mechanical trap, was subtle enough to outsmart his warrior psyche. Even as he left his comrades for the solo climb that would spell the difference between success and failure on this night, he could feel himself sinking deeply into the killing-survival instinct. Every cell in his body went on emergency alert. As his inner ear and mind’s eye swept the surroundings, he became aware of the slightest wind, the smallest scurrying sound of the tiniest creature. Only tuned to every moment of the fine line of life and death could he hope to survive the Chessman’s sinister strategies. For this was no ordinary opponent. This was a man—if one could call the despicable mind-twisted evil, whose mental reach outstripped all others, a man. This was a man who could peer into his enemies’ minds like a psychic scourge and rip out their will power. Rockson knew that he would have to be a shadow, a formless wind of death. Only then could he slip through the traps and ploys that he knew must lie between his lethal hands and the Chessman’s ultimately vulnerable pale throat.
The Doomsday Warrior slipped along the shadows, taking advantage of the gentle roll of lawn to hide his muscled, bronze-hard body. He came upon a hollow in the land deep enough to afford him good cover, and close enough for him to scan the Tower and plot the details of his assault.
The ancient masters of war have always stressed that knowledge of the enemy is worth more than legions in the field. Rockson knew that he must clearly fix the gamesman consciousness of the Chessman in his mind before he took his step. For once the game of life and death began, the Doomsday Warrior knew, there was only will and instinct. The hands of the Doomsday Warrior were ready; they would not fail him. There was no thought that could break their grip. The futureman tuned his awareness into the rest of his body, steeling every organ, every molecule, into a carefully unified force. He must plunge deeply into the powerways that the Glowers had taught him, to make up for the lack of equipment. Only with the mind was the impossible accomplished; only with inner calm could the river of potential be unleashe
d.
The compound gun was in his grip. It was puny by comparison to his futureworld’s weapon of choice, the Liberator rifle, but was as lethal a weapon as he could fashion with the backward technology of this time.
He snapped the beech open, pulled out the clip. Everything A-OK—a full magazine of flesh-destroying .50 caliber rounds; a smooth, well-oiled action. The gun would work for him, though to use it meant to violate the principal strategy that would keep him alive—stealth. Ninja-stealth. “You must enter like an invisible wind, cut down your enemies, and disappear into the night,” Master Chen had taught once. “Only that way is there any hope for a lone ninja to truly succeed.”
Rockson knew that if he got the Chessman and destroyed his equipment, his lackeys would then be unable to dominate and enslave the inhabitants of Salt Lake, even if he, Rockson, should die.
And with the Veil, the force field, shut off, all could flee.
His chronometer showed that the minute of power-cut was nearly over. Fifty feet to go. With all possible speed the Doomsday Warrior combat-ran to the wall of the Tower. He touched it, examined its surface with his night-keen mutant’s eyes. He picked with care the fine cracks and crevices that led up to the open bell tower at the top. Too easy—an open invitation—this way would be full of traps. He moved to the south face.
He let his eyes start at the base of the Tower and move upward. A mere thirty feet off the ground they came to rest on an arched, elaborate stained-glass window. It could easily be reached, if one simply threw a rope over the horned-dragon gargoyle directly above the window and pulled himself up. Too easy—a trap. The low window was obviously going to be the most heavily protected. If he sent out an alarm by crashing through it, he knew that he would never make it to the Chessman’s lair.
He circled swiftly to the east face of the Tower. It was smooth, barely a fingerhold anywhere. This was the way.
He searched out the first fingertip holds of the path to the Tower window high above. He’d have to trust that Chessman believed this wall unscalable. It wasn’t—quite.
He began his ascent, steeling his mind against fear. Slowly he pulled himself, one finger and toehold after another, up the nearly sheer face of the silent Tower. The rhythm of his climb melded with the breeze that wafted above the city. He was a speck of dust, a fly; a white bird. He only looked at the minute granules of sand frozen in the surface of the concrete, the fine edge of life and death that he now held in his steely fingertips. His focused mind’s KA power, its inner instinct, was at one with the process of climbing.
Climber and the Tower became one, perfect. Unable to fall.
He at last came to the overhang of the ledge just beneath the bell-tower opening. He grabbed it just as his concentration faltered. There were noises below—people talking! He froze, looked down. The Runners weren’t to expose themselves unless Rock was spotted. What had happened?
But it wasn’t the Runners. He heard a pleading female voice among the heavy footfalls. A rookie squad entering the grounds of the Tower, a blond woman in their midst.
Kim. And the two children were with her.
Sixteen
Kim! Oh, God! She wasn’t really his wife, she was not the real Kim—and the kids weren’t really his. But he couldn’t let them suffer or perish at the hands of the Chessman. They hadn’t done anything wrong—they couldn’t be held responsible for him. They were innocent!
Rockson watched them disappear into the maw of the Tower far below him. The children were wailing, and Kim was crying and pleading with the police.
One of the policemen shouted at them as he prodded them with his stick, and his voice drifted up to Rockson.
“Quiet!” the officer bellowed. “Save it for the Chessman! Shut up and show the proper respect for the Holy Ground!”
So—Chessman himself wanted to see the “Rockman Family.” The holy man would get more than he bargained for.
Rockson huddled under the ledge just below his goal, the Tower window, huddling to avoid being spotted. He clung to the sheer face like a human fly.
He saw the figures below enter the portal of the Tower and heard the heavy door shut.
Scattered shooting and screams erupted below as the Runners were discovered by the guards and thought police. A burst of machine-gun fire peppered the Tower just above Rockson, causing him to duck even lower. Damn! Couldn’t the resistance people get the upper hand? If they couldn’t hold out, he would soon be outnumbered and outgunned by reinforcements. They had to hold the Tower hostage.
Rockson dodged another spray of bullets. Then, with the compound gun thrown over his shoulder as a counter-weight, he pulled himself up onto the ledge. In a quick, darting movement, he slammed the butt of his gun into the pane.
It was made of some sort of shatter-resistant material, and did not break. Cursing, he leveled the muzzle of his gun at it and let loose a short blast, hating to waste bullets on a window.
The window was not strong enough to deflect the point-blank bullets. It cracked into a web and then fell in a shower of jagged shards. Rockson knocked loose a few remaining pieces and hurled himself through the opening just as a volley of machine-gun bullets spit into the Tower around him.
He tucked and hit the floor inside on his right shoulder, rolling with the impact, holding the compound gun close to his body. In a flash he was on his feet, weapon ready to fire. But no enemy confronted him. He was alone—for the moment.
Rockson quickly sized up his surroundings. He was in a dimly-lit hallway that curved around the perimeter of the top of the Tower. Below, through the broken window, he heard sounds of fighting. Wild screams of death, the whoosh of flames.
With his back to the wall and his finger on the trigger, Rockson slid around the hallway, ready to pump lead into anything that jumped out at him. Rockson kept sliding and sliding along the smooth wall, wondering when he would hit a door or an interior window, hoping he had not struck a dead end—that the Chessman was on another level.
Then he saw it—a small, steep metal staircase that went up to the very tip of the Tower’s spire. It had to lead to the Chessman’s lair!
In the same instant, a black blur shot out from around the curvature of the hallway, coming head-on at Rockson. It was a guard, and he opened fire on Rockson with his submachine gun on full auto.
Rock took a chestful of lead. He cried out in pain. The impact sent him flying backward off his feet, crashing into the opposite wall. His head slammed into concrete. He saw stars and sank to the floor.
For a wild, crazy moment, he thought he was dead. The front of the white suit was ripped and burned, but there was no blood. The jacket had stopped the bullets—saved him from death. All he had suffered was a bruising from the powerful impact of the gunfire. The “White King’s” clothing was bullet-resistant!
Click click. Click. The guard was firing again at Rockson, the barrel of his gun leveled at the Doomsday Warrior’s head, but nothing was happening. He was out of ammunition. Cursing, he fumbled in his belt for another clip.
Rockson pushed himself up and swayed to his feet, steadying himself against the wall. He lifted his own weapon and fired in a tight arc. The guard’s arms jerked, and he dropped the clip and gun. He staggered backward, screaming, but the scream was abruptly cut short when bullets tore into the man’s throat. Blood burst form the severed neck like water under pressure. The guard collapsed in a heap.
Rockson wiped away the dead man’s blood that had sprayed into his own eyes and went to the body. He took one remaining clip from the ammunition belt, and the emptied pistol which was still warm.
The guard wore the insignia of a knight. “Bad move,” Rockson muttered as he stepped over the corpse. He leapt onto the staircase and began climbing up.
A series of rapid shots came at him from above. Bullets pinged and richocheted off the steps. Another guard was at the top of the staircase, dodging into view just long enough to squeeze off shots from his submachine gun, then ducking back out of sight.
There was nothing for him to do but go forward and up. Rockson jumped up the stairs, holding his finger down on the trigger of his gun. The noise was deafening. Bullets zinged everywhere, in careful patterns and angles.
The bullets hit home, blinding the man. As Rockson reached the top of the staircase, he quit firing and flipped the gun around to jam the stock into the midriff of the blinded man.
The man grunted as the breath was knocked from him, and tried to push his own weapon into Rockson’s face. With a deft slice of his hand, Rockson snapped the guard’s arm back; the gun clattered down the stairwell. Something else fell loose and banged down the stairs—the extra clip of bullets Rockson had taken from the dead soldier.
The guard unsheathed a knife and began jabbing wildly at Rockson. Rock twisted his face to avoid the razor-sharp blade, but not fast enough—the edge caught him on the cheek and raked a bloody trail from temple to jaw. The wound was superficial, but it hurt like hell and bled profusely.
Dropping his gun, he struggled with the guard for control of the knife. The man had incredible strength, and Rockson’s muscles strained to keep the knife-point out of his throat. Blood was running from the man’s shattered eyes.
He grasped the guard’s wrist and twisted his hand around until the blade was pointing in toward the man’s body. He made a hard thrust. The twisting knife pierced the man’s side, and he screamed. Rockson hit him in the throat with his fist, causing the guard to lose consciousness. He slumped to the floor. He would be out for at least an hour.
The guard had been the last line of exterior defense for a single, unmarked door. The Chessman’s door, Rockson surmised. There was no knob; the door opened by handprint. The print-reader was imbedded in the wall to the right.
