by Douglas Hill
He was happy to let them try.
Their attack began without warning. And even though Keill had been expecting it, he was surprised – when one of them, with the Miclas-face, suddenly dropped to one side and swung a scything leg at Keill's ankles while the other leaped into the air, a blur of red, and drove a flashing, venomous kick at Keill’s face.
They were ferociously fast and skilled. And Keill knew that he had a very dangerous fight on his hands.
But even before the knowledge had formed, he had responded, his own skills and reflexes doing what they had been trained to do from the cradle. He seemed to leap and to drop, both in the same instant, so that he was flying sideways, horizontally in the air, while one kick swept beneath him and the other lashed harmlessly above. Then his left hand struck the ground to brace him, and his own boot lashed out at the knee of the man with the Callor-face.
The kick would have shattered bone, but it did not land. Callor-face parried, and dodged away.
Then Miclas-face was up, circling, so that the two were on either side of Keill as he came to his feet.
They sprang at the same moment, but Keill had expected that. He feinted a counter-punch at one, swivelled to meet the other. His forearm blocked a chop at his throat, but his own elbow-smash was parried, and then he had to twist aside from a brutal drop-kick that grazed his tunic at kidney-height.
Again they attacked together, from opposite sides. Again Keill feinted towards one – but it was also a feint when he turned to the other. A boot glanced off his thigh as he leaped away – leaped backwards, into a bruising but balanced collision with the attacker behind him. His hands instantly found the grip for a throw – but the other had shifted, twisting into a new, leverage. And it was Keill who was flung off his feet in a perfectly executed counter-throw.
But he had anticipated it – and in fact had planned it. As the other, Callor-face, had made the throw, Keill’s hand had snatched with perfect timing and speed at the butt of the bolstered gun. He struck the ground in a neat roll that took the impact, and came acrobatically to his feet with the gun levelled at the others.
The two halted in their tracks, faces showing anger and amazement. Keill began to step towards them, but the motion was not completed.
'Drop the gun!’
The harsh voice struck like an explosion through the ravine. Keill looked slowly around, then opened his hand and let the gun fall.
The man Keill had seen before – the thirty-year-old with the face of Miclas – had stepped into view, with a gun in his hand. But he was not aiming it at Keill. It was pointed at the head of a limp body that the gunman gripped by the collar.
Despite dirt and encrusted blood, Keill had no difficulty recognising Tam.
'This one is still alive,’ snarled the man with the gun. 'Keep still, or he won't be.’
Keill turned to face him, half-raising his hands, calm and watchful.
'Excellent.’ The gunman glowered at him for a moment, then turned the look towards the two younger red-uniformed men.
'Now perhaps you believe me,’ he snapped, 'that you still have things to learn.'
'He was lucky,’ the young man with the Callor-face said sulkily, 'We could take him, any time.'
'Your chance may come,’ said the gunman coldly. He turned back to Keill with an ugly grin.
'Impetuous youth. Like your young men.’ He gestured with the gun towards the fallen Jitrellians. 'No doubt you ordered them to remain hidden – but one of them had to come up for a look around. We saw him before he saw us, and it was his last look at anything.’
He paused, but Keill said nothing, merely gazing steadily at the other.
'Silent and wary, like a true legionary.’ the gunman said, with a grating, humourless laugh. 'And I should know, should I not? For I too am a legionary. We are all legionaries here.'
He took a step forward, and his next words struck Keill like daggers of ice.
'You may be the last legionary of Moros, Keill Randor. But here is a new legion – the Legion of Rilyn!’
CHAPTER SIX
Keill sat silently in the forward seat of the skimmer, his hands resting on the sides in full view, as he had been instructed. Around him the other skimmers clustered, as closely as the terrain allowed, as they moved steadily on a route that Keill knew would lead to the tower Glr had spotted. He seemed as calm and controlled as ever, yet within his mind he was frozen with shock and revulsion at the ugliness of what he had learned.
When the gun of the red-uniformed leader had urged him further along the ravine, he had found that this group was ten in number, as had been the other that he had watched from hiding the day before.
But they were not ten different individuals.
Five of them were exactly alike, in every detail – and the details were those of Miclas, as he must have been when a young man.
Three more of them, also exactly like one another, also young, were the images of Callor.
And the remaining two, as youthful as the others, but slightly shorter and bulkier, were precise replicas of another great legionary from the past of Moros – Osrid, the space captain, who had died of a degenerative illness a month before Keill himself had left Moros for the last time.
It needed no great effort of deduction for Keill to realise what they were.
They had to be clones.
Somehow living cells had been taken from the real Miclas, Callor and Osrid, to be bred and developed into these youthful duplicates.
It was chilling enough for Keill to be seeing young versions of legionaries who had been old and venerated when Keill was a boy. It was more chilling to know that the cloning process, the growth of the duplicates, had to have been going on for more than twenty years.
If it was a Deathwing operation – and Keill felt no doubt now that it was – it showed how long the Warlord's plans had been taking shape. And how long the Legions had had an evil, deadly enemy without having an inkling of his existence.
But why, Keill asked himself, had the Deathwing cloned legionaries, and obviously trained them to a high level of martial skill? What purposes had the 'Legion of Rilyn’ been created for?
And – more immediately – how had the clones’ leader known Keill's name?
It was almost as if they had been expecting him...
The clone driver of the skimmer ahead of Keill glanced round, ensuring that the prisoner had not changed position. And Keill knew grimly that he would have little chance if he did so. All the clones, even the drivers, were holding their drawn guns in readiness – and their leader, the older Miclas clone, had ordered them to shoot at the first sign of a threat.
They had been told merely to injure Keill – again, an indication that they were keeping him alive for some reason. But they had been told to kill young Tam – who was slumped in one of the other skimmers, still unconscious, from a head wound caused by a bullet that had grazed his skull.
Against that double threat, Keill had no choice but to remain still. The odds had been lessened slightly, when the two clones with whom he had fought had been sent back to their base on foot – as a punishment for their defeat, and to make room in the skimmers for Keill and Tam. But they were still odds that only a fool would oppose. And Keill felt that he had been fool enough already that day.
He could still see, in his anguished mind's eye, the sprawled bodies of the young Jitrellians. But the pain and sorrow that rose within him was matched by his deep-rooted, icy anger. Sorrow could not bring the young men back to life, nor could the guilt he felt for leaving them alone in their clumsy inexperience. But anger might avenge them – and also avenge the insult, the desecration, that had been done to the memory of three revered legionaries of Moros.
There would come a time when that anger could be released. But not yet. And at least the skimmers were taking him where he wanted to go, towards the clones' tower. That was where the answers would be found to the questions and mysteries that had gathered around him on Rilyn – answers that he n
eeded, before he launched any sort of action.
He did not even consider the idea that action might be impossible. To a legionary, no position was totally hopeless while life remained. He had some advantage in the fact that the clones' leader wanted to keep him alive. Also, none of his captors had spotted the two well-disguised grenades at his belt.
And finally, there was a small winged alien high in the dull sky, no doubt watching everything.
Glr's inner voice spoke, perfectly on cue.
Keill, are you intending to stay in that unpleasant cavalcade?
Quickly Keill recounted what had happened, knowing that Glr would soon pass on the information about the clones to the Overseers. Then he explained why be was remaining passive for a while.
I do not like the idea of you being in that tower, Glr demurred. Should you not free yourself, and choose your own time to approach the tower?
'I'd prefer that,'Keill replied. 'But right now my chances are poor.’
Then I shall improve them,Glr said blithely.
'How?'Keill asked, concern colouring the mental words. 'There are eight guns here!’
My friend,Glr said, her laughter rising, if l am not to expose myself to risk, why am I on this dreary planet at all? Watch and wait.
Her voice withdrew, ignoring Keill’s urgent attempt to recall her.
Worry tugged at his mind, as he tried to imagine what Glr might be planning. But at the same time his trained self-discipline resisted the pointlessness of tension. Glr had said 'wait', so he waited – relaxed and still, as only a legionary can be when waiting is necessary. But at the core of his stillness was a fiercely concentrated alertness – which could blaze into instant, lethal action at the first glimpse of a chance.
And eventually, his chance came.
A small dark shape appeared in the dull sky, ahead of the skimmers. Descending, it revealed itself as the form of Glr, soaring on the wide sails of her wings.
The clones saw her at once. The leader snapped an order, and the skimmers slowed, while their occupants stared upwards. Yet even then their discipline held: the gun muzzles did not waver a millimetre away from Keill.
Except for their leader. 'What in space is that?' came his harsh voice from a skimmer behind Keill.
Glr wheeled above them, curving away as if she were a wild creature seeking safety.
'There are no winged beasts on Rilyn!' the leader shouted. 'Is this something to do with you, Randor?'
'I know nothing of this planet's wild life,' Keill said flatly.
At the same time his mind was desperately shouting at Glr. 'You're too low – they’ll pick you off!'
I presume that burst of mudheaded thought was some form of warning,Glr said acidly. I know what I am doing.
Keill concentrated, to form his thoughts more clearly. But he was distracted, his heart jumping within him, when the clone leader's gun crashed without warning.
Glr's wings beat furiously as she sought to gain height.
'Knock it down, men!’ the harsh voice ordered. 'I want a look at that thing!’
Other guns boomed around Keill. Not all of them, for at least three remained steady on him. But he hardly noticed them, his eyes fixed on Glr's frantic ascent.
The guns crashed again. And Keill watched in horror as Glr seemed to veer suddenly, one wing drooping to her side.
The other wing nailed weakly as she began a slow agonising spiral, down, down... till she vanished from sight beyond a rocky promontory.
---
'Got it!’ Miclas yelled. 'Let's go pick it up. But spread out – it may be still alive, trying to get away.'
He pointed at the two clones on the skimmers carrying Keill and Tam. 'You two, stay and watch Randor. Don't take your eyes off him – and shoot if he moves a finger.'
At his gesture, the other skimmers swung round and moved away.
But Keill was scarcely aware of them. Inside his mind he was screaming, 'Glr! GLR!'
The silent voice that replied was vibrating with excitement as well as laughter. A convincing performance, was it not?
Relief flooded through Keill. 'Are you hit?'
I very nearly had wing perforations, Glr laughed. But shooting upward is never certain, with handguns.
' Where are you now?'
A long way from where I seemed to fall. They will sorely search for me a while – so if you plan to do anything, I suggest you begin soon.
'I intend to,’Keill said fiercely.
Slowly, cautiously, he turned his head. His two guards might have shot without warning, he knew
– but he was relying on the fact that they were young men full of self-esteem who would feel even more bravado when holding guns over an unarmed and apparently defeated captive.
'Stop it there,’ said the clone in the seat behind him.
He halted his movement as soon as the clone spoke. But he had turned far enough to take in the details he needed, in his peripheral vision.
When he had been taken at gunpoint to the skimmers, he had learned that only the older leader of the clones was called by the full name of Miclas. The others bore shortened forms of their names, along with identifying numbers corresponding to the numbers worn like insignia on their uniform collars.
Keill had heard the leader use the names Mic-4, Cal-31, Os-15, and so on – and the leader had named Mic-12 and Os-9 as the drivers of the skimmers carrying himself and Tam, and now as his guards.
But he was not interested in their names, nor their appearance – only their positions. The clone called Mic-4 was in the seat behind him, gun resting lightly on the top of the skimmer between the two seats. The second clone, Os-9, wasin the rear seat of a skimmer to Keill's left and slightly behind him, with Tam still slumped silently in the forward seat.
But even as he looked, he saw Tam's eyelids flicker and open. His body twitched, and one hand reached up to the wound on his head.
For an instant both clones shifted their gaze towards Tam. 'Keep still or you're dead!’ snarled Os-9 as Tam swung slowly around to stare at him.
Tam settled back, frowning, glancing towards Keill. 'What are they...’ he began.
'Shut it!’ Os-9 hissed, raising the gun menacingly.
Tam subsided nervously, and both clones returned their watchful gaze to Keill. He appeared not to have moved a muscle. But in that brief time he had minutely shifted position.
His body was now inclined slightly towards the left; his right leg was solidly braced. Moving, at speed out of the skimmer seat would still be difficult – especially with two guns waiting. But he was far more ready than before.
'I almost wish he would try something,' said Os-9. There was a brittle edge to his voice that told Keill of taut nerves, tense anticipation. 'The brothers were right – he did get lucky, before.'
'That right, Randor?' asked the other clone, Mic-12, lounging in the seat behind Keill. 'Just luck?'
'Put your guns down,’ Keill said quietly, 'and try for yourselves.'
The fact that those were the first words he had spoken since his capture – and that they were spoken with a deadly edge wholly different from his apparent placidity – seemed to disturb the two clones. They both laughed aloud, but there was more tension now, in both voices.
'No chance,’ said Mic-12. 'We'll just sit here, peacefully, till we get you back to the boss.’
Keill wondered at that. 'You mean when the boss gets back,’ he said casually, 'from his little hunt.’
'Miclas? He's just the captain, and a brother,’ said Os-9, with a snicker. 'The boss is something else. He'll turn you sick-scared, Randor. Wait'll you see his...’
'Brother, you talk too much,' Mic-12 broke in sharply. 'Shut your mouth and mind your trigger.’
Os-9's face flamed red and his mouth closed with a snap. In the silence, Keill weighed this new information.
The clones had another leader, the 'boss', back at the tower. And apparently that person was not another clone – not a 'brother', like Miclas the captain.
It added up beyond any doubt. At the tower, at the head of this curious force of clones, was an agent of the Deathwing.
Keill wondered briefly if he should after all let the clones take him in, to face this mysterious leader. But in the end it still seemed wiser to free himself, now that Glr had created the diversion. And then, too, there was Tam to consider.
'What about having a look at my friend's wound?' he said. 'It's still bleeding.’
'Let it...' Mic-12 began. But he was interrupted by Tam himself, as perfectly timed as Keill could have wished. Involuntarily the young man had started, and his hand had reached up again to his injury.
The movement drew the gaze of both clones, for an instant. And Os-9, behind Tam, even made the mistake of swinging his gun muzzle towards the Jitrellian.
He had barely begun that move when Keill had finished his.
His hands flashed with the speed of thought across the narrow space between the skimmer seats.
His right hand reached towards Mic-12 – while his left hand clamped like a band of steel round the barrel of the clone's gun, the heel of the hand jammed against the muzzle.
Mic-12 had felt rather than seen Keill's blurring movement. Reflexively he pulled the trigger. The bullet should have ripped away most of Keill's left hand, leaving the rest a shapeless, useless mass of bone splinters, torn flesh and dripping blood.
But the substance that the Overseers had used to replace Keill's entire skeleton could withstand even that force.
The bullet merely gouged a painful furrow in the flesh of Keill's hand, as it struck that unbreakable bone and ricocheted away.
And by that time Keill had grasped the front of the clone's uniform and dragged him forward – to make him a shield against the gun of the other clone.
Mic-12 tried instinctively to jerk away from Keill's grip. But Keill did not resist the movement.
He let the clone pull back, and went with him – using the momentum to vault smoothly out of the skimmer, towards Os-9.
That was a moment of danger – when Os-9 might have been quick enough, and clear-headed enough, to stop Keill in his tracks by threatening Tam.
