by Douglas Hill
But just as he was about to move into it, a door at the other end of the smaller room began to move – and he caught a glimpse of dark-red uniforms.
Quickly he let his own door close. So there were clones still in the tower. Their training, he thought, must have included a high degree of blind loyalty, if they were so ready to risk their own lives to seek out The One, For they must have known that there would be no room for them in the small spacecraft on the tower's roof.
He heaved at a computer console next to the door, toppling it in a burst of sparks across the doorway. That and the force of the Starwind would hold the clones back awhile. Long enough for him to take the only chance he had left.
He slid towards the window, barely glancing at the golden form of The One, huddled face down and motionless against the wall. For a moment he paused, crouching low beneath the window, while the wind pounded and screamed through the room. He was aware, separately, of all the different wounds and bruises that throbbed in his body, and how much the savage battles of that day had taken out of him.
He also knew that what he was planning would have been difficult enough on a calm, still day when he was wholly fit and rested.
His mouth twisted in a wry half-smile. As his training captain had liked to say, only a dead legionary gives up.
He used another fraction of a second forming Glr's name in his mind. But again there was no reply. For a moment his shoulders sagged – because he knew that if she had reached the ship, she would respond. And if she had not reached it by now.., then she never would.
Outside the tower, the Starwind was reaching hurricane force. And not even Glr could fly in that shrieking, dust-laden hell.
Then he straightened, his expression cold and determined. There was still the spaceship on the tower, and somehow he would find the strength to reach it. Somehow he would survive, to avenge Glr – by finding the Warlord.
He reached up and took a firm grip on the edge of the window-frame. Then he slid up, and over, swinging out into the monstrous grasp of the storm.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As he hung from the window edge, the Starwind bellowed and clawed at him, flailing his body against the wall as if he were a dangling strip of cloth. Pouring every scrap of his strength and will into the steely grip of his hands, he braced himself for the nearly impossible – when he would release one hand and try to swing sideways, back on to the platform of the external elevator.
He gathered himself, and let his right hand go. And in that fraction of time the Starwind seemed to whirl back upon itself. A gigantic gust struck Keill's swinging body, scooped him up and hurled him past the corner of the vertical groove, down on to the solid metal rectangle of the elevator.
'That's the second time you've helped me,’ Keill said aloud into the wind, remembering the gust that had staggered The One. 'Are you on my side now?’
It almost seemed that it was. The wind no longer threatened to sweep Keill off the elevator at any second. Instead, its titanic gusts were plastering him, almost to immobility, against the inside of the vertical groove.
He glanced up. It was a long way to go, and very little chance he would get there. The tower was now not merely trembling, but vibrating enormously, like a vast tuning-fork. And the structure seemed to have taken on a definite sideways lean. Time was running out, for anything above ground on Rilyn.
He set his jaw, fought his way to a sitting position across the groove, his left side towards its inner wall. He was just tall enough so that his shoulders pressed against one of the side walls of the groove, while the soles of his boots touched the other.
Much of a legionary's training took place in the harsh, unforgiving terrain of the Iron Mountains of Moros. So the techniques of the climber were second nature to Keill, including the method of ascending a wide crack in the rock – a fissure or 'chimney’. He had to brace his back against one side and his feet against the other, and move up step by sliding step, using friction and the strength of his legs to keep position.
Keill had done it many times. But not on a wall of smooth metal, in the midst of the most terrible windstorm in the galaxy.
Nevertheless, he began to climb.
All of his ferocious concentration gathered to focus and direct his strength. His legs were like bars of rigid steel, their lateral force keeping him braced within the groove. Pushing with his hands beneath himself, he slid his back upwards a centimetre or two. Then one foot moved up; then the other.
Then the process was repeated – only a tiny advance each time, so that there could be no chance of a hand or foot slipping, toppling him back where he began.
Sweat burst from his body, as the wind swirled and stormed within the groove, trying to fling him upwards, slamming at his body as if it would break him in two. His lungs laboured to draw breath as the air was snatched from his gasping mouth by the wind. Pain grew in his legs as the cruel pressure took its toll on his muscles.
He felt all these things, but locked them away behind the diamond-hard barrier of his concentration.
With agonising slowness, but without pause or let-up, he climbed the tower.
All sense of time drifted away, so that he could have been climbing for minutes or days. All sense of other dangers was put aside, so that if the tower had toppled at that moment, Keill would have maintained his position until he struck the ground. Even the overwhelming, demented fury of the wind receded from his awareness, till it seemed no more than a distant roaring in his ears. He did not look up, or down; his eyes saw nothing but the wall of the groove ahead of him, And he climbed.
Slide the back up a centimetre or two. Then one foot up; then the other. Repeat the process.
Repeat it again. Again. Again...
A century seemed to drift past. A millennium – an eternity. A small area of Keill's mind began to inform him, in cold, rational tones, that even a legionary's strength and determination had its limits – and that he had reached his. He continued to climb.
The small area of his mind told him that the tower was now leaning more severely, that metal supports were bending and cracking, with huge rumbling crashes of tortured metal, that it was an interesting question whether his strength or the tower's would give out first. He continued to climb.
The small, rational area of his mind went silent, and prepared itself for death.
Then his upper back slid painfully across a sharp edge of metal. Reflex flung his left arm out, and miraculously the clutching fingers found a grip, and held. There was no inner wall to the groove any more; there were no side walls.
He was at the top.
With the last desperate remnants of his strength he dragged himself sideways, on to a flat surface of metal, and rolled. For an instant the wind crushed him motionless to the metal surface where he was lying – then flicked him away, almost contemptuously. He rolled again – and fell.
The roof of the tower had been constructed some three metres below the top of its thick walls, so that it formed a broad well. Keill had rolled across the thickness of the wall, and had toppled down on to the roof.
Even then his legionary Instinct twisted him as he fell, so that he landed on hands and feet, absorbing the impact, before sprawling full length in an exhausted heap.
---
It seemed the most pure and delicious pleasure – to lie there, letting the agony of his tormented muscles drain and fade as they relaxed, gulping deep breaths in the relative protection of the roof-well. He wanted to lie there for ever, just resting and breathing.
But then he forced his head up, to look around. And what he saw on the far side of the roof wrenched him, cold with shock and disbelief, up into a half-crouch.
The semicircular shape of the spacecraft was still there, also protected by the roof-well, and held fast by solid clamps on its landing pad. Even so, it was quivering and heaving under the impact of the wind, as if it were about to leap into the sky of its own accord.
But it was not the ship that froze Keill with horror. Nor
the sight of two armed clones, also crouched low to avoid the full monstrosity of the wind. Instead it was an object lying on the roof just beside the spaceship's open airlock.
A giant human shape of golden metal.
Keill's mind blurred under the impact of the unthinkable. The One could not have survived, to reach the roof. That blast of energy exploding into the golden body would have permanently destroyed all the complex mechanisms of even the most advanced cyborg. The One must have been killed...
Then Keill looked more closely, and the sickening, ghastly realisation struck him.
The smooth golden hood of The One's body was empty, faceless. And a seam had been opened across the metal shoulders and down the chest. Something... had emerged. The One was not a cyborg, not a being in which mechanism and organism were permanently united. The metal body was simply an exo-skeleton – like a vastly complicated suit of golden armour, containing a myriad of high-technology servo-mechanisms, that operated the body at the command of the wearer.
Keill had killed the vehicle – but not the passenger. The loyal clones had obviously carried The One up to the roof, and freed him from the wrecked metal body so that he could make his escape.
And then, revealed for an instant within the spaceship's airlock, Keill saw The One as he truly was.
A tiny, twisted, deformed shape, scarcely human, of mottled grey flesh. Unable even to walk, it wriggled and dragged itself with short, spindly arms, while legs that were little more than twisted tentacles trailed behind it. The head was out of proportion, huge on the grotesque body – and Keill caught a final glimpse, as it half-turned, of the puffy face, the blubbery lips contorted with effort.
Then the creature had wriggled out of sight. The airlock slammed, the heavy clamps fell away from the ship as its energy drive bellowed into life.
With a raging yell of his own, Keill sprang up, his gun flashing into his hand. But the ship lifted at once, yawing and swerving as the wind's fury struck it, and Keill's beam merely flamed harmlessly against a jutting portion of undercarriage. He fired again, begging the wind to strike the ship down – but the wind seemed to sweep it upwards, aiding its flight, flinging it so rapidly that Keill's shots flashed through empty air.
And then Keill had to throw himself flat on the roof, for energy beams were slashing dangerously around him. The two clones – mindlessly loyal even after their leader had left them behind to die – had spotted him, and were firing furiously.
Keill raised his gun to fire back, as the clones crept determinedly towards him. But the gun only flared weakly in his hand. The energy charge was spent.
He flung it aside and gathered himself for a final rush. So he had made that agonised, suicidal climb only to watch The One flee to safety, while he met his death under the clones’ guns. Very well, he thought, let it come. It had been a good fight, a good try.
The clones’ guns came up, and Keill leaped towards them, knowing they were too far away, knowing that they would cut him down before he was halfway to them.
An energy gun blazed, its beam crackling as it kneed out But the clones had not fired.
It was a beam striking from the sky. And the two clones were hurled backwards as molten metal erupted where the beam sliced into the roof.
Then they were both flung into oblivion as a gout of rocket-flame swept the roof clear.
Retro-rockets. The retros of Keill's ship, plunging through the titanic frenzy of the Starwind towards the tower.
And a wild, wordless, telepathic battlecry filled Keill's mind. A cry that was not his own.
'Glr!’His own heart-stopping exultation could not prevent him from knowing what had to be done, or from forming the mental shout with care. 'Get that other spaceship!'
Keill, the tower is falling! It will be down in seconds!
'Get the ship!’Keill yelled. 'Destroy it!'
He watched his ship pull up, its drive howling as it fought both the force of the turn and the hurricane power of the Starwind. But Glr was a pilot to be reckoned with – and hope surged within Keill as his ship arrowed away, vanishing in seconds into the darkened maelstrom of the sky.
Beneath him the roof tilted. Metal screeched and buckled – and a deep, widening crack split open the tower wall at one corner, running across the roof like a terrified living thing.
Keill was flung to his hands and knees. He waited there, unmoving, watching the final torment of the tower that would bring him his death.
The Starwind shrieked, proclaiming its final, ultimate victory.
And then its shriek was joined by the thunder of a spaceship's drive. Keill again heard the roar of retros, felt the blistering heat of their flame surging above his head.
Lifeline!Glr screamed in his mind. Take it!
He glanced up and saw the slender thread of the lifeline, swinging towards him from the open airlock as the ship flashed past above him. Glr's skill had timed the sweep perfectly. The lifeline slapped across his chest, and his reflexes were swift enough. He clutched it, and was yanked instantly off his feet.
From somewhere he found the strength to hang on to the line, and the extra strength to form the most urgent thought of all.
'The ship – what happened?'
Gone,Glr said swiftly. Into Overlight as soon as it reached deep space – before I could get near.
Keill's heart sagged. So The One had made good his escape, vanishing into the faster-than-light drive where he could not be pursued. For an instant the taste of failure struck at his will, sought to loosen the grip that was nearly tearing his arms from his shoulders as the ship curved up and away, and as the colossal force of the Starwind struck at him in a final desperate fury.
But then the line was being automatically reeled in, the safety of the airlock growing closer. While beneath him the tower came apart in a rending, grinding thunder, a blossoming orange-red explosion, vast metal fragments crashing and crumpling towards the ground, only for the Starwind to gather them up again, and fling them away into the sky like a flurry of dry leaves.
PART FOUR
AFTERMATH
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Keill's spaceship hurtled upwards, out of the atmosphere of the planet Jitrell, the forward viewscreens displaying the welcoming expanses of deep space.
'A friendly people,' he said idly, speaking aloud, his fingers making final adjustments at the controls.
Mudheads, every one,Glr replied. But generous enough with their food.
Keill laughed. 'Generous with most things.’
True,Glr said, her own laughter bubbling. I shall always enjoy remembering your embarrassment when Tam was determined that you should have his medal.
Keill shook his head ruefully. 'I think he was secretly relieved when I wouldn't take it. Anyway, he deserved it.’
'And I?' Glr teased. Did I not deserve some official honour?
'They couldn't have stopped you eating long enough to present it,' Keill grinned.
But the grin faded as he remembered just how much Glr deserved, for what she had been through. She had given him only the barest outline of her harrowing fight through the Starwind. But he had understood that her struggle had been a terrifying counterpart of his own climb up the tower. She, too, had fought to advance and to survive for what had seemed eternities – while with every wing-beat the wind had threatened to dash her down against the rocks or snatch her up impossibly high, to suffocate in the upper atmosphere.
But in the end, by some miracle of determination and direction-finding, she had reached the cave where the ship lay. And then, she told him with a note of shame, she had collapsed into unconsciousness as soon as the airlock had closed behind her. When she had finally awakened, and found strength enough to move, she had been unable to tell how much time had passed. She had blasted the ship into the sky, using both the drive and the forward guns to free it, in terror that she would reach Keill and the tower too late.
'You nearly did,' Keill had said lightly when she had finished her story. And then he
had a further glimpse of the suffering that she had undergone – because for once Glr had had no light-hearted reply to make. Instead, a shudder had rippled through the small body, and a cloud had seemed to sweep across the brightness of her round eyes.
That had been just after they had fled the collapsing tower, to the safety of deep space. There they had waited out the storm of the Starwind, watching as the planet's atmosphere became like a monstrous living thing, in the writhing contortions of a final agony. Even after they had fled, the wind continued to rise, so that it seemed as if the very solidity of Rilyn would be split and shattered. But at last it reached its peak, and began to fade, as the rogue planet that was its cause swung further away from Rilyn.
When the storm was spent Keill and Glr plunged back down, landing near the spot where the tower had stood. Hardly a sign was left that any structure had ever stood on the plateau – only a riven hole in the earth, and a few enormous shards of metal from the tower walls, driven like gigantic knives deep into the very rock itself. The surface of Rilyn was as silent as before, scoured and desolate, with almost no trace of the tough shrubbery or the green carpet of moss. They would need many years before the remaining few fragments of roots could grow and sprout and spread again, Keill had used his communicator to contact the Jitrellian authorities and explain some of what had happened, then had begun his own search for Tam. In the end it had been Glr who spotted him, from the air, lying half-dead at the mouth of a cave, having crawled out when the wind had dropped.
But he had revived quickly in his delight at seeing Keill alive – and when a substantial force of armed Jitrellians had landed, Tam had insisted on joining them, and Keill, in a thorough combing of the surrounding terrain, in case any of the clones had also survived.
