Sword Empire

by Robert Leader

  Kananda braked to a stop, breathing heavily with his sword in his hand. His blood was up and he looked for Lars. The boatman was still standing as though transfixed, staring with horror, but as their eyes met the sudden inrush of fear brought him back to life and he turned to flee back inside the inn.

  Kananda would have sprung in furious pursuit, but Zela’s voice stopped him.

  “Kananda, no! We must get out of here.”

  In the same moment, she fired the engine of the sky-car and its wing blades began to whirl above them. Kananda hesitated, then jumped over the intervening bodies and ran to join her. As he swung up into the seat beside her, the engines roared into full life.

  “Can you ride this thing?” he asked doubtfully.

  “If you mean can I fly it, the answer is yes.” Zela grinned at him as her hands moved deftly over the controls. “Gheddan technology is almost identical to our own. They stole most of it from us in the first place.”

  The rotating blade-wings spun faster as the craft powered up, and then the sky-car began to ascend. Startled faces still stared at them as they lifted off the ground, but with five of the City Guard scattered limp and bloodied along the street, no one dared to interfere. They cleared the tops of the buildings and Zela turned their nose north. Giving the motors full power she sped toward the city’s outer walls. Darkness was falling swiftly now. The lights of the city twinkled below and the last shreds of a dying sunset were fading on their left.

  Within minutes, they were flying over the great, black bulwark of the city wall, with the rearing sword blade that marked the river entrance to the city on their right. Zela continued to follow the course of the river to the north for a few more minutes, until it made a great right hand loop. Here she dropped down low, still heading due north as though to straighten out the bend of the loop. Then she abruptly cut out all their lights, letting the sky-car fly in darkness for another minute before making a tight curve to their left and heading due east across the night sands of the open desert.

  She turned to smile at Kananda, relaxing her concentration for the first time since becoming airborne. “The guards we attacked had no time to get a message back to their base, so with luck we’ve got a small head start on any pursuit. We’re in okay with the fuel. The tank is full and we might just have enough to get us all the way back to the skimmer.”

  “The sky-chariot will fly such a long distance?” Kananda was still amazed by the wonders of this strange new world.

  Zela nodded. “If I can skirt the Kaz-ar space base without running into any more trouble, then it should get us across the Gar Desert and back to the Black Swamp River. The direct route is not so far when you don’t have to walk, or travel on a slow old riverboat.”

  Kananda gazed with admiration at the control panel switches and screens, remembering the even more bewildering control complex of her space ship. “You say that all this is Alpha technology.” He fumbled slightly with the unfamiliar word. “And that the Gheddans stole it all from you.”

  “Well, they didn’t exactly steal all of it,” Zela said wryly. “A lot of it was foolishly given to them. There was once a group of naive scientists and philosophers on Alpha who believed that we had a moral responsibility to share our discoveries with Ghedda. They dreamed of a future where both civilizations pooled their talents and resources for the benefit of all, and they reasoned that Alpha must make the first steps to make this dream come true.”

  “So they gave your secrets to your enemies!” Kananda was shocked.

  Zela nodded sadly. “It was a wonderful, beautiful dream. But Ghedda was not ready for such a dream. They are still locked into the culture of the sword. Our great benevolent thinkers, our prophets of Love and Unity, were premature in their hopes. Now they are reviled as traitors, and it may be that they have consigned us all to oblivion.”

  She was silent again as Kananda struggled to understand the full, ironic implications of what she had said. Those who sought peace had sown the seeds for war. The gods here, or the One God Behind All Gods as Zela and her father proclaimed, seemed as frivolous as those on Earth. He wondered what old Kaseem would make of that?

  While they talked, the sky-car had raced across the black, undulating contours of the desert. The stars were now bright in the brilliant, cloud-free sky above them, and starlight glittered off their steel wing-blades. Far to the south now was a dim, earth-bound glow that marked the site of the Kaz-ar space port. Zela’s eyes searched all their horizons, but constantly flickered back to that southern glow. They were well clear of the city, so if any pursuit followed them now it would come from Kaz-ar.

  A low groan sounded from behind them, and guiltily they both looked back over their shoulders. Jayna had stirred for the first time, still sprawled on her back on the rear seats where she had been thrown.

  “See to her,” Zela said, a little angry with herself for having forgotten their injured companion.

  Kananda hastened to obey, climbing awkwardly through the cramped and narrow gap between the front seats. He had been desperate to rescue Jayna, but in the heat of the attempt and the excitement of their escape, he had given her no more thought. Now he too was slightly ashamed of having neglected her and he hurried to make amends.

  There was blood at her mouth and nostrils, and severe bruising on the side of her face and around her eyes. Her shirt had been ripped away from one bared breast and there were deep red scratches across her shoulder. She looked as though she had been crudely but badly beaten with bare fists.

  He gently eased her into a more comfortable sitting position and then began to examine her for any more serious damage. He ran both hands gently up and down her arms and then her legs, and was relieved to find no indications that any of her limbs might be broken. Sliding both hands inside her shirt, he made the same light-fingered examination of her rib cage, and at that moment she opened the one eye that was not swollen shut and smiled weakly at him.

  “Be my guest, at least you are more gentle than the last one.”

  Kananda was relieved to see that she had regained consciousness. “Where are you in pain?” he asked.

  “Everywhere.” Jayna groaned and winced as she sat more upright. “But I think I am all in one piece.” She tentatively drew a slow, deep breath. Her breasts rose and fell again, and then she forced another small smile as she pushed Kananda’s hands away. “All ribs intact,” she assured him.

  “What happened?” Kananda asked her.

  “They were waiting for me. They were in our room and they had already tipped out our packs and found my communicator. They slapped me around, wanting to know where the two of you were. Then they decided to call down a patrol car and get me out of the way while they waited for you both to return. They beat me up some more while they waited, and that is as much as I can remember.” She looked around the cabin of the sky-car, and then through the window at the night sky and the desert below. “How did I get here?”

  Kananda explained and she heard him through without interruption. “I don’t remember seeing Lars,” she said at last. “They must have kept him out of sight when I walked back into their trap.”

  “I should have killed him,” Kananda said sourly. “Before I went in search of you, I should have run him through.”

  Jayna shrugged. “There are always some loose ends. But at least I am alive and free, and I know just how to thank you.”

  Kananda stared at her uncertainly, and even Zela half-turned her head to look back at them with doubtfully raised eyebrows.

  Jayna laughed. “Kananda, I have news of your sister.”

  “Maryam?” Kananda could hardly contain his excitement.

  “Well, news of the ship that brought her here,” Jayna corrected herself slightly. “In the barracks food market, I listened to the gossip of a woman who is the partner of a Space Corps engineer named Caid. Her man was the ship’s engineer on the space-cruiser commanded by Raven on his mission to Earth. Caid has spent the last week preparing the ship for a new mis
sion. Raven has returned and the Council of Twelve has ordered him to take command of a task force squadron of five ships and return to the third planet. His mission is to capture your city of Karakhor and to deny the city and the planet to Alpha. If your sister is alive, and if she is still with him, then that is where you must now look. For us, there can be no return to the City of Swords.”

  Kananda felt his initial elation being pierced by shards of doubt and frustration. The Gods were playing games with him and he had missed Maryam by a matter of hours. If she was still alive! Jayna had no confirmation of that fact, only that Raven had returned and was being sent back to Earth. And Maryam might never know how close he had come to finding her, or even that he had ever followed her to Ghedda. For one wild moment, he almost asked Zela to turn the sky-chariot around and take him back to the city, but no matter what his heart demanded he knew in his head that Jayna was right. It was impossible now to go back. Also there were now other things to consider, in addition to finding Maryam.

  “We must return to Alpha,” he told Zela. “From there we must return to Earth. I have to warn my father and Warmaster Jahan. I must return to Karakhor.”

  “All in good time,” Zela said grimly. “First we have another problem to resolve. We’ve got company.”

  She was looking through the cabin window to the south and Kananda and Jayna twisted their heads to follow the direction of her gaze. Three flashes of light in a V formation low on the black horizon were heading straight toward them.

  “I’ll try changing course. It’s just possible that they are on some routine flight and not looking for us.” She moved the controls and banked the sky-car to the left, setting a new course direct for Steel City, the second city of the empire on the coast to the southeast. It was a reasonable destination for an aircraft on legitimate business. However, almost immediately the three distant aircraft also banked in unison to turn onto a continuing course to intercept their new flight path.

  Zela swore, spun the control wheel again and put them back on their original heading of northeast. She gunned the throttles to full power. The Gheddan pursuit continued across the harsh, starlit desert landscape, and slowly the three lights grew brighter and closer.

  “They are faster than we are, but not by much.” Zela was trying to determine as much as possible from the speed and maneuverability of the three closing ships. “I guess that means we are probably out-gunned, too. This ship has medium-power lazer banks, good enough for pin-point shooting and keeping peace inside the city. Their fire-power will be heavier with extended range.”

  “What can we do?” Jayna asked, and there was a knot of fear in her voice.

  “Hope to get lucky,” Zela said calmly. “First they may be thinking twice about shooting down an expensive piece of City Guard hardware. They may try to force us down and keep the sky-car intact. That could give us an advantage. They will then be in range of our weapons, and I could spring a few surprises. In all probability, they are just standard air jockeys, and they have no way of knowing that they are chasing a skilled combat pilot.”

  “And if they decide to just come in with all guns blazing?”

  “Then we are dead,” Zela said flatly. She looked back and grinned faintly. “Buckle up, and strap yourselves in. Even if we don’t die, it’s going to be a rough ride.”

  Jayna’s face was pale, but immediately she wriggled into the seat harness behind her and began pulling the buckles tight. Kananda followed her example and strapped himself into the seat beside her. The following aircraft were now coming up fast behind them, clearly visible as three more rotary-bladed fliers, slightly larger and more formidable than their own.

  A moment later a harsh voice thundered through the speaker mounted inside the cabin ceiling.

  “Patrol car C-G-Five. Whoever you are, you will land immediately. Otherwise you will be shot down.”

  Zela shrugged and switched on her own communicator. “Pursuit ship, I do not understand. We are a City Guard Patrol on legitimate business.”

  “The City Guard has no legitimate business outside the city. You are criminals who have stolen the patrol ship. You will land now and be boarded, or be destroyed.”

  “You are in error,” Zela said calmly. “But we will comply and land the ship as you have ordered. Then we can discuss this face to face and you can apologize for your mistake.”

  She reduced the throttles and tilted the blade controls to slow them onto an angle of descent. The three pursuit ships took up stations, one on either side, and one above and behind their own. In close formation, all four ships began a long slow glide toward the sand dunes below. Carefully, Zela teased the throttle controls, reducing their speed more and more.

  “They should reach stalling speed before we do,” she said softly for Jayna’s benefit. Kananda had no idea of what she was talking about, or what she might intend to do.

  They drifted lower toward the desert floor. To Kananda, the dunes were like the frozen swells and waves of a darkened yellow sea and he watched, mesmerized, as the higher crests reached up toward them. Dust swirled off the crests in great plumes, but he was not sure whether there was a strong wind blowing down there, or whether the commotion was caused by the downdraught from their own slow whirling blades. There was the sound of the night air slipping past their steel flanks, and the steady swish, swish of the blades. It was all like a slow motion dream, or nightmare.

  Abruptly everything changed. Zela pushed the throttles fully open and as the patrol ship surged forward, she heaved into a tight, circling turn to the left. Beams of lazer fire slashed through the spot where they had been seconds before as all three of the Gheddan pursuit ship pilots hit their firing buttons. The larger ships had been brought down to a slow engine speed that made them sluggish and clumsy and Zela was turning back into them before they could kick their motors fully into life and fix their target sights again. She had the momentary advantage and the skill to use it. The ship that had been on their left was now directly in their path and Zela hit it square amidships with her own lazer fire. As the pursuit ship exploded in a hot ball of flame and flying debris, she heaved back on her control wheel. They soared through flame, smoke and heat, with scattering shards of metal crashing and ricocheting off their own hull, and then they were through, unscathed except for a multitude of dents and scorch marks. It was kill or be killed, and without hesitation, Zela flung the ship around again in search of her next target.

  Kananda and Jayna were thrown helplessly left and right in their restraining harness straps, and Jayna screamed with the fresh pain to her already bruised and battered body. Kananda gasped and felt as though his head had been half-wrenched from his shoulders. Through horrified eyes, he stared over Zela’s shoulder and through the front cockpit window. The Gheddan pursuit ship that had been above and behind them was now dead ahead, looming up with incredible speed on a direct head-to-head collision course.

  Zela fired a second burst of lazer fire and the cockpit of the approaching vessel and the terrified blue face of its pilot all disappeared in a cascade of shattering glass. Zela heaved their patrol ship upwards again, and mercifully the last act of the dying Gheddan had been to plunge his ship into a dive. For a moment, it seemed as though the whirling steel blades of the other ship must slice through the helpless underbelly of the patrol ship, and then they were clear and over. The Gheddan ship fell momentarily out of sight. Its death dive continued and buried the second pursuit ship into the side of a giant, rearing sand dune, where it exploded into another holocaust fireball, spewing sand and debris upward from the impact.

  Zela could not avoid the upward blast and the patrol ship was flung another hundred feet up into the sky. It careered round in another floundering half circle which this time was unintended. Zela had lost track of the third pursuit ship, but a stream of lazer fire slamming into their extended tail marked its position. The shock reverberated through the cabin which was suddenly spinning round in helpless circles as Zela completely lost control. Her lu
ck and their short moment of advantage had run out.

  The night sky whirled around them, a vortex of stars and leaping horizons gone insane. Then abruptly, the third ship reared up in her vision. It was banking hard to the left, trying desperately to get away from the risk of another collision. Zela hit her firing button again as it passed through her sights, an almost blind shot that was as much a scream of defiance as a survival instinct. The patrol ship’s lazer blasted out in one last hot white beam that seared through the rotary column supporting the blade wings of the last ship. With the blade section severed, the fuselage beneath dropped like a stone.

  Zela did not even see the third ship crash. She was too busy fighting the controls and trying to keep their own crippled ship in the air. They were still supported by the miraculously undamaged blades, but with the tail section gone she had no means of controlling their height or direction. She could only attempt to slow the ship and hope for a less violent ground impact that would not kill them all.

  “Brace yourselves,” Zela screamed. “We’re going down.”

  The patrol ship was spewing out fuel from its ruptured tanks and Zela tensed herself for the inevitable explosion. It only needed one spark, but it didn’t happen. The tanks vented themselves and then the motors groaned and came to a stop. The blades above them continued to whirl of their own momentum, but they were slowing and the ship dropped faster. The sand dunes rushed up to meet them.

  If they had hit a dune square on, it would have killed them, but instead the falling ship clipped the top of one of the dune giants, tilted forward, and then slithered in a continuing but braking rush down the long slope into the valley between the dunes. The blades snapped off in huge thunderclaps of sound, and then the fuselage was rolling free. They rolled over and over, ploughing a gigantic furrow in the sand. The glass windows shattered and great clouds of sand drove violently into the cabin. Slowly, the slide leveled out, and stopped with the cabin of the ship buckled but still intact, although every extremity had been stripped off her.