by Douglas Hill
"If you can still hear me," she said, It might brighten your final moments to know what is to happen. In about three minutes the container will open, and the radiation capsules will spill out." She gestured towards the metal ovoid fixed in the viewport. "But in one minute from now I will be back in the shuttle - or perhaps in your ship, if it is more suitable -and on my way to deep space. To watch Veynaa's death, and yours, from safety."
She laughed mockingly, flung the robot control cylinder on to the control panel, and turned towards the door of the control room.
But then she paused. A new sound had begun to emerge from the bowels of the great freighter's shell. A crackling roar that was far louder and more powerful than the thrum of the boosters.
Glr - blasting her way through the nearest bulkhead with the energy guns of Keill's ship. "What..." Joss muttered.
The roar outside grew to a bellow. Not of the guns now, but of the ship's retros. Keill twisted his head around, seeing the reflected orange flare of flame through the doorway as Glr swept the ship thunderously down on to the broad metal apron beyond the control room.
Paling, Joss whirled and sprang towards Keill, her hand clutching for the gun at his belt. But the robot's grip had pressed Keill's arm to his side covering the gun, and she could not work it loose. Then Glr was in the room.
Wings booming, fangs bared, she seemed to fill the air above them, like some furious, blazing-eyed spirit of ven-gence.
Joss screamed and cowered away. And in one of Glr"s small hands an energy gun flashed and crackled.
The beam struck into the centre of the robot's pyramidal body. Smoke gushed from the wrecked circuits, and the robot jerked, its arms straightening, flying uncontrollably apart.
Glr hovered overhead, as Keill, released, dropped to the floor on his feet, before the terrified woman.
For a flashing instant he locked eyes with her, the deadly weapons of his hands poised like blades.
Then, with an inner snarl at his own weakness, he flung her aside with a sweep of his arm. Her slim body slammed brutally against the solid metal of the robot's body. And she crumpled, half-unconscious, to the floor as the robot, out of control, flailed its arms crazily through the air above her.
Ignoring it and Joss, Keill sprang to the control panel. As he moved, his mind was forming words with rigid concentration.
"Glr, get back to the ship and get ready to lift off! I'm setting the freighter for Overlight in thirty seconds!"
But... Glr began.
'Don't argue -go!" Keill yelled.
The great wings swept once, and Glr vanished through the door. Keill's hands were blurs as he made the adjustments to the freighter controls.
Then a scream of manic rage from behind him made him whirl, poised to strike.
There was no need. Joss had recovered and regained her feet, and may have intended to hurl herself at Keill, to prevent him altering the control settings.
But she had been prevented.
Perhaps it was the impact of Joss's body that had restored at least a few of the connections in the robot's damaged circuits. Enough to reawaken it to its most recent instructions.
Its whipping, threshing, steely arms had found Joss as she had risen.
Instantly they had clamped round her body, as they had around Keill's, and jerked her up off her feet.
She hung, suspended, struggling faintly. The robot's instructions had included an order to increase its pressure -and mindlessly it was obeying. As Joss saw Keill spin to look at her, the fear and fury drained from her eyes. Only a desperate pleading remained in their dark depths.
"Keill..." she whispered. "Please..."
He glanced at the cylindrical control mechanism, on the control panel where Joss had thrown it.
Within his mind, the time-count that he had begun, when the freighter's controls were set, ticked relentlessly ahead.
Twenty-four seconds left...
He looked back at Joss, his face expressionless. i don't know how to operate the robot," he said stonily. "And there's no time to learn."
Her scream was little more than a whimper as he turned away towards the control room door.
Outside, his ship waited on the platform, airlock open. He dived through, sprang to his sling-seat. Nineteen seconds...
The ship's drive thundered into life. It lifted slightly. "Now', he said fiercely to Glr, "a way out"
The ship's forward guns blasted. On the side of the freighter, metal glowed, began to flow down the curving sweep of the hull. Thirteen seconds...
A hole appeared in the hull. Through it he could see more flame flickering - from the heat of the freighter's entrance into Veynaa's atmosphere.
Even before the hole was wide enough, he slammed on , full power.
Nine seconds ...
The ship screamed forward, guns still blazing. Its blunt nose smashed into the gap in the hull. In a rending explosion of tormented, half-melted metal, it burst through, and clear.
Six seconds ...
Brutally Keill dragged the ship howling upwards, curving it away from the plummeting freighter. The Overlight field, when it was operating, extended out around a ship. He bad to get well away.
Three seconds...
He glanced at his viewscreens, his ship still at full power. Just about...
Now.
In the screen, the image of the freighter blurred, shimmered.
Then it was gone.
Keill. Glr's inner voice was soft, worried. You know that entering Overligbt so mar a planet can distort the field. The freighter could emerge anywhere - with the weapon.
"It won't," Keill said bleakly. i didn't programme it to emerge at all."
And his ship climbed away towards deep space - while below, the planet Veynaa rolled peacefully on its axis, unheeding, unharmed.
PART FOUR
AFTERMATH
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the distant, boundless expanses of deep space, in a sector of the Inhabited Galaxy where probably no one had ever heard of Veynaa or the Ouster, KeilTs ship winked into existence out of Overb"ght.
At the controls, Keill ran his eyes again over the settings and computer data, confirming his course, then switched to automatic and leaned back, stretching luxuriously. Beside him, in her special seat, Glr also stretched, flaring her delicate wings.
Keill looked at her expectantly. She had been silent for a long time, reaching across the galaxy's distances to the minds of the Overseers in their hidden asteroid - reporting the final events over Veynaa, the ultimate defeat of the Warlord's plan.
Now awareness had returned to the bright round eyes that she fixed on Keill.
The Overseers are phased, she announced. All in all, they feel that we have been successful.
"All in all?" Keill echoed, raising an eyebrow.
They do have certain regrets, Glr went on. First, the Deathwing now knows that you exist, and that you are a threat to the Warlord's plans. Second, we have learned little more about the Deathwing, or its leader, or the Warlord himself.
Keill snorted. "I was a little short of time to have a long informative chat with Quern. Even if he would have told me anything."
I put that point to the Overseers - somewhat forcefully, Glr said. Quiet laughter curled for a moment around her silent voice. They then reported that peace has returned to the Cluster. The Overseers have indirectly encouraged a rumour on Veynaa that the Cluster rebellion was the fault of one unscrupulous, power-hungry leader, who is now dead.
"Accurate enough, as far as it goes," Keill put in.
As you say. But because of this, the Veynaans are not being vindictive. The Cluster survivors have begun to rebuild their Home, and Veynaa has agreed to hold talks about improving their conditions and giving them more control over their lives.
"If that had happened in the first place," Keill said sourly, "Quern would never have got a grip on the Cluster."
Humans are renowned, said Glr, for perceiving the proper course of action when it
is far too late to take it.
"But it's not too late," Keill objected. "Not for the survivors, or the Veynaans. It would have been too late only if that weapon had been used."
Agreed, Glr replied. You will also be amused to know, from the Overseers, that the Veynaans are very pleased with themselves. They say that they were proved right — that the Cluster was bluffing, and did not dare to use such a weapon against an inhabited planet.
Keill shivered, remembering how close it had been, how few seconds had remained before those deadly capsules would have spilled out into Veynaa's atmosphere.
And that thought recalled another that had been troubling him.
"Glr, what about the weapon?" he asked. "The radiation capsules were still set to be ejected, which means they'd leave the freighter in Over light."
There is no danger. The capsules, as Quern told you, would react only on air - so the chain reaction cannot begin in Overlight. The capsules will remain harmless, outside the freighter but within the Overlight field, for eternity.
Keill did not reply, silenced by the awesome weight of that last word.
Eternity.
My race, the Ehrlil, Glr went on, has travelled longer and farther in Overlight than any humans, yet even we have fathomed only a fragment of its nature. "But we do know that a ship entering Over-light has entered a nothingness all of its own. It no longer inhabits "normal" reality - but also it cannot impinge even on other ships in Over light. In practical terms, the freighter simply no longer exists. Nor does the weapon. She paused.
Nor does the woman.
Keill nodded sombrely. "I see that. Anyway, the robot's grip would have killed her before long." His eyes grew dark. "And I don't think I would have released her even if I'd known how."
For a few moments they sat silent, each wrapped in separate thoughts, not for communication. Then Glr stirred, shaking out her wings, looking around at the viewscreens.
You still have not told me what course you have set, she said brightly.
Keill responded to the change of mood, sitting up, glancing again over the control panel. "I'm keeping a promise to you."
A promise? Glr's eyes glowed. About the place where you say there will be good flying - where I may stretch my wings at last?
"I thought you'd remember," Keill smiled. "We'll reach the system soon that contains the planet I'm thinking of. It has a very small population in terms of land area — so there are huge tracts of it still totally untouched. In those regions there are places where the sun is warm, the turf is soft underfoot, and there are deep pools of the clearest water you "II ever see."
No doubt that would be of great interest, Glr said loftily, to fishes and humans and other inferior species.
Keill laughed aloud. "And beyond those pools," he continued, "are mountains that seem to reach up for ever, where strong winds blow all the time around the peaks, and the air is the freshest in the galaxy."
Perfection! Glr cried. Her wings thrummed, her round eyes glistened. Canyou not get more speed out of this primitive craft of yours?
And her silent, bubbling laughter mingled with Keill's as he reached towards the controls.
The Last Legionary 3: Day Of The Starwind
By Douglas Hill
BOOK THREE OF THE LAST LEGIONARY SERIES
BOOK THREE OF THE
THE LAST LEGIONARY
A strange tower stands within an impenetrable force-field on a barren planet. Its mystery draws Keill Randor, The Last Legionary , in his continuing search for his enemy, the Galactic Warlord.
On the planet Keill, and his alien companion, Glr, must do battle with deadly life forms and with the clones of great warriors. But far greater threats to their lives come from the terrible power of the Deathwing – and then, finally, from the awesome, planet-scouring Starwind itself.
THE LAST LEGIONARY QUARTET
No.1 GALACTIC WARLORD
No.2 DEATHWING OVER VEYNAA
No.3 DAY OF THE STARWIND
No.4 PLANET OF THE WARLORD
for Marni and Ken
Douglas Hill ©1980
Piper Edition 1989
ISDN 0 330 26652 7
PART ONE
THE MYSTERY OF RILYN
PROLOGUE
Generations of peace had left the people of Jitrell unwary by nature. The planet was rich enough in resources to be nearly self-sufficient, yet not so rich as to attract the greedy or the violent from elsewhere among mankind's Inhabited Worlds. It was close enough to the main space lanes to profit from trade, when it needed to, yet remote enough to be untroubled by turmoil and upheaval on other worlds.
It was just about right, according to its first colonists, when man had been spreading himself among the stars in the centuries of the Scattering. life was good on Jitrell; life was comfortable. Perhaps too comfortable...
Comfort was definitely uppermost in the minds of the spaceport guards in Belinter, the premier city of Jitrell, in the middle of a balmy summer night. The guards were tending to lounge, to idle, to cluster in groups and exchange murmured jokes and easy chat The port had not been busy for weeks, and was nearly empty – except for two or three freighter ships whose cargoes had already been forwarded on their long commercial journeys, and a few stacks of commodity containers behind the stout doors of storage depots. Nothing much worth stealing; nothing much worth guarding.
So the guards were totally unprepared for the sight of their command post, with all their outgoing communication systems, apparently beginning to collapse upon itself – as if struck by a giant, invisible club – and then exploding in a thunderburst of flame and flying debris.
The guards were ordinary men, with only basic training, and they reacted like ordinary men. They froze. Shock, bewilderment and fear blanked their minds, paralysed their limbs, for just long enough.
And the others were upon them.
They seemed to come from nowhere, as if the very shadows had given shape to them. Twenty or more men, in dark red, one-piece uniforms, moving in a perfectly co-ordinated attack that was all the more terrifying in its smooth speed and its eerie near-silence.
Some of the attackers rode light, two-man skimmers, hovering on a cushion of gases. Others were on foot, as swift as predators, and as deadly. They came at the guards in a rush, while those on the skimmers fanned out towards the dark shapes of the freighters and the storage depots.
In seconds both the ships and the depots were also crumpling in upon themselves before exploding in violent bursts of flame. But the Jitrellian guards did not see that happen. The guards were busy dying.
To their credit, one or two of the guards had overcome their panic soon enough to reach for their bolstered weapons. But that merely meant that they were the first to die – in a storm of energy beams from the guns of the attackers.
Those slower guards who were not cut down by the searing beams fell soon enough. The attackers, closing in on their victims, used only their hands – with the easy, almost casual skill that a woodman might show lopping limbs from a tree with his axe.
At the precise instant that the last guard crumpled, a spaceship swept in low over the port, hovering for a landing. It was the shape of a semicircle, like half of a giant disc, with a dark, non-reflecting exterior and no visible insignia. As it landed the attackers moved towards it, with the same speed and coordination, their silence still unbroken. In seconds they were aboard, less than three minutes after their first appearance. The ship lifted swiftly, vanishing into the night sky.
On the ground of the spaceport the huddled forms of the guards lay still, and a last small flame flickered and died within the shattered remains of a freighter.
---
The Jitrellians reacted to the news of the attack with a towering but useless rage, tinged with fear. Their rage was useless because there was not the smallest clue to the identity of the raiders, or their purposes.
And their fear came from the fact that this was not the first such raid – though it was the most murdero
us– that had happened on Jitrell within the previous months.
All over the populated parts of the planet, units of the small armed forces were sent to reinforce the guards at spaceports and important industrial sites. And the Jitrellian authorities argued, debated, theorised, yet in the end came to the conclusion that they could come to no conclusion. There was no way of knowing who ,or why.
It was pointless, they said. It was mindless.
But wiser, calmer heads, a long, long way away from Jitrell, studied the reports of the raids – which they gleaned from widespread monitoring devices that the rest of the galaxy did not dream existed.
These wiser heads were sure that the raids were not pointless. And they were sure that they could recognise a mind – a very special mind – behind them.
CHAPTER ONE
Like a spearhead with a rounded point, a small spaceship burst out of thick cloud cover, heat shields still glowing from its plunging dive through atmosphere. Its trajectory flattened as it curved down to skim the surface of the planet Rilyn, where the rust-coloured waters of a broad ocean moved sluggishly in slow, flat waves.
Billows of fog reached up to enfold the ship, which was a compact, one-person fighter. Within it the viewscreens showed only swirls of grey. But the man at the control panel – a lean, dark-haired young man in a grey uniform – did not alter his speed. The ship sensors and computer instrumentation gave him all the guidance data he needed. Leaning forward tautly in his slingseat, hands moving over the controls as if they had eyes of their own, he watched the data screens with tireless concentration.
He was Keill Randor, once a young officer in the celebrated Legions of the planet Moros. Now he was the galaxy's last legionary, the only survivor of the swift and terrible destruction of the Legions.
But even though he was a man without a planet, without a people, he did not travel alone.
