by Douglas Hill
His expression as dead as that of the robot Keill had been, he reached up and knocked with metallic resonance on the door.
---
There was a pause. Then the door slid slightly open, and to one side of the opening Keill saw a flash of scarlet. So Marska had come to answer the knock – and was sensibly staying out of any line of fire.
But she had in turn glimpsed the green uniform, perhaps had even noted the cord showing beneath the helmet.
'A soldier, alone,' she snapped, obviously speaking to others in the room behind her. She moved slightly more into Keill's view. 'What do you want?'
Wordlessly, Keill stepped into the room.
It was low-ceilinged and spacious, as he remembered. When he had seen it, it had been furnished with several heavy, comfortably cushioned bench seats, along with a scattering of small tables, freestanding light fixtures and a few vid-screens and tape-viewers. Now some of the furniture had been pulled back, clustered together to form something of a barricade, leaving a broad open space between it and the door.
All that Keill noted during his first step into the room.
'What do you want? Marska repeated, her voice showing both puzzlement and irritation.
Another stride forward. The woman in scarlet began to step away from the door as well, beside him, reaching out to grasp his arm. By then, though his eyes seemed wholly blank and motionless, Keill had scanned the Deathwing and their defences.
Some of them were grouped behind their makeshift barricade on the far side of the room. Four or five of them there, he estimated, though others might be hidden from his view. The rest were scattered more widely, though just as well protected. Near the corner farthest from Keill, he glimpsed the lustre of gold, and knew where The One was.
Predictable, he thought wryly. That corner held the only other exit from the room.
Another stride forward.
The woman in scarlet had grasped his arm by then, and tried to halt him, but he resisted the tug of her skeletal hand. One or two of the others were half-rising, peering towards him. He saw the bulky figure of the black-bearded dwarf, with his mirror armour, and next to him the ugly pair with the reptilian green hide. There too was the man with the long monkey arms, crouched half out of sight.
Verylike the Battle Rites, a part of Keill's mind said, remembering the odd collection of mutants in the arena in Banthei.
The rest of his mind was concentrating hard. Only a fractional second remained, he knew, before the illusion broke. But his three paces into the room had brought him close to one of the heavy bench seats that had not been taken into the Deathwing barricade. Its bulk of metal and plastic might protect him, too, for a while. If he could just make one more step...
But his time had run out.
Marska had continued to advance with him, black eyes peering suspiciously from the stark white face. Suddenly the expression on that face changed, and her harsh voice rang out.
'It's you! Randor!'
She started to fling herself back, started to snap her arm up, to release the blazing death of a fireball-from the heavy bracelet at her wrist. But Keill had begun to react before her first word was fully spoken. He grasped Marska and swung her around in front of him, just as the fireball erupted. It blazed towards the far corner, sending three of the Deathwing diving for cover as it exploded against the wall.
Then, lifting Marska's skinny body, he flung himself forward, holding her like a shield, towards the bench seat.
Some of the Deathwing were quicker than others, and almost as quick as Keill. Three energy beams blasted towards him as he leaped. Two missed entirely – but the third stabbed into the narrow body of Marska.
As she screamed in her death-pain, Keill hurled her aside and dived headlong into the welcome shelter of the bench. Even as he struck the floor, one of his two remaining grenades was sailing towards the barricade.
The floor trembled with the shock of the explosion. Then the air of the room seemed to be filled with the crackling blaze of energy guns, the crash and flame of other weapons, and the pain-filled cries of those whom the grenade had left alive.
Odds cut down a bit more. Keill thought grimly. But I can't stay here forever.
He shrugged swiftly out of the heavy green tunic, and flung the helmet and cord off his head. His guns seemed to spring into his hands. Already the cushions were aflame on the bench sheltering him, and the metal and plastic were beginning to melt under the withering onslaught of the Deathwing weapons.
But suddenly the firing halted. And the silence was filled with the hollow shout of The One.
'You are going to die, now, Randor! Look – see the form your death will take!'
Letting no more than an eye show past the edge of the half-destroyed bench, Keill looked. And sickness welled up within him.
Advancing openly towards him across the room came an aged man, with a deeply lined face and a straggle of white hair, his tall but stooped body draped in the folds of a long, plain robe.
Talis.
The heavy cowled hood of the robe was thrown back. So Keill could not only see the old face for the first time, but could also see with revulsion the thin, pale cord wrapped around the wrinkled brow.
Talis, enslaved by the Arachnis link, controlled by the Twenty-four – advancing on Keill with an energy gun clutched in both of the long, thin hands.
The gun blazed. The beam bit deeply into the floor, a few centimetres from where Keill lay.
The Deathwing will be enjoying this, Keill thought bleakly. Sending Talis to be my executioner, knowing that I'm not likely to shoot him.
But while they're enjoying themselves, he thought, they'll relax a little. Maybe just enough.
Talis's gun fired again, the beam burning deeply into what was left of the bench protecting Keill.
As it did so, Keill replaced his left-hand gun at his belt, and slid the fingers of that hand under the heavy metal base of the bench. It was free-standing, he was relieved to find, not fixed to the floor. He gathered his strength, sought the leverage he needed.
Then in one smooth surge of power he came up off the floor, bringing the bench with him, upended. And in the same movement he flung it into the path of the advancing Talis.
The old man tumbled reflexively backwards, losing his balance as he tried to avoid the toppling bulk of the bench. And Keill dived – one hand slapping on to the floor, the arm forming a rigid pivot as he swung his body around horizontally, and swept Talis's feet from under him.
Talis crashed down, the gun spinning from his hand, the white head cracking painfully on the floor, stunning him.
Sorry, old friend, Keill thought. There was no other way.
But the speed of his movement left the thought behind. He had let the sweep of his body continue so that he came, crouched and ready, to his feet. His left-hand gun leaped again into his hand, and both weapons blazed out their fiery death. The battle fury surged within him as he hurled himself forward against the Deathwing.
---
He was a shadow, a whirlwind, a blur of non-stop motion at the utmost limits of his almost inhuman speed. As he moved he was spinning, swivelling, dodging – he was half-falling, rolling, springing up again – he was leaping, whirling, twisting... The room was criss-crossed with the flaming beams of Deathwing guns – yet they slashed through empty air, for somehow, miraculously, Keill was never there.
And yet also, somehow, within the dizzying, blinding speed of his rush, his own guns were finding their marks. Two more of the Deathwing fell with charred and gaping wounds in their bodies, in the first micro-seconds of that storming charge.
The others were leaping away from the barricade, striving to regroup themselves in the face of that awesome attack, when Keill came among them.
If he had been a whirlwind before, now he was a tornado. Still at the eye-baffling upper limit of his spinning, twisting, hurtling motion, the computer-swift mind of a fighting legionary wove a smooth pattern of destruction among the Deathwing
group. Yet the Deathwing too were fighting for their lives.
Out of the wild mêlée a hand struck at Keill wielding the white-hot blade of a therm-knife. But the edge of Keill's hand blocked the blow and broke the wrist that struck it, while as part of the same motion one of his guns sliced another attacker nearly in half.
The long-armed monkey-man sprang on to Keill's back, unnatural fingers clutching for his throat.
But Keill reached back to grasp one wiry wrist, and smoothly flung the man over his head, hearing bones crack as the man struck the far wall.
Out of the midst of the furious battle Keill saw the flashing movement of the reptilian mutants, saw the glitter of the two blood-roses leaving their hands, razor-sharp circular blades spinning with deadly speed. But Keill was already flowing into a perfect back somersault, and firing to both sides at once, so that the green-skinned killers were falling, their scaly chests half-incinerated, before the blades passed through the spot where Keill had been.
The whole onslaught, from the beginning of Keill's charge, lasted only a few seconds. And then Keill was alone, leaping away from a heap of twisted, bloody corpses, towards the door at the far end of the room.
His computer mind had already done its sums. Three Deathwing agents out of action at the first, from the grenade; Marska making four; and now seven more overwhelmed in that terrible close-quarters slaughter.
That left two – who had discovered the better part of valour, and were making a dash for the far door. One of them was the bearded, armoured dwarf.
And the other, well in the lead, was the towering golden figure of The One.
Keill went after them in a headlong rush.
The dwarf wheeled, raising the short baton that was his preferred weapon – the heat-wand.
Keill's body arrowed forward in a smooth, flat dive, one hand taking the impact, as the wand flared. The narrow ray of unbearable heat hissed harmlessly over his head, and Keill's gun fired at once in reply.
But when his beam struck, he realised the nature of the dwarfs shiny armour. The mirror-bright substance deflected the energy beam, harmlessly, to one side.
Surprise might have delayed some men for a fatal instant, as the heat-ray blazed once more. But the reactions of a legionary are not slowed by surprise. Even as he rolled-smoothly aside from the ray, Keill fired again – into the centre of the dwarf's unprotected face.
As face and beard vanished in a bloom of flame, Keill was up and running, slamming out through the door that had allowed The One to escape.
An empty corridor.
He flung himself along it, towards the end that formed a T with two branching passages. Both empty.
But one of the side passages led to a dead end, and another bulky metal door. And was there a hint of some sound beyond the door? An eerie sound, like the whisper of a distant wind, just on the threshold of hearing?
He was at the door and through it in an instant. And then he stopped, rooted, his blood seeming to congeal into ice.
It was as if he had stepped back in time. He found himself on a narrow metal gantry, stretching across one side of a broad, deep, metal-lined shaft, where strange energies glowed and radiated.
From the depths of the shaft, yet reaching high above the gantry where Keill stood frozen, rose the thousands of writhing, flailing, seeking tendrils of Arachnis.
But there was something else – something immeasurably worse.
In the air above the shaft, the air that was sickeningly alive with the threshing tendrils, he saw Glr
– with a hundred or more of the tendrils coiled and tangled round her.
One wing was still partly free, but was beating only feebly, as the monstrous tangle drew her down.
Down towards the blazing luminescence of pure, lethal energy that surrounded the body of Arachnis.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Keill's frozen pause ended as soon as it began. He sprang forward to the gantry railing, his guns blazing.
The withering beam swept like a scythe through the tangled cluster of tendrils that held Glr, slashing at them again and again.
As the severed ends fell away, Glr's wings came free. They thrust down with thunderous power, lifting her up as Keill swung the searing blaze of his guns across other tendrils that groped up towards her.
At the same time, he was weaving and dodging at the gantry's edge, for more of the tendrils had writhed their way in his direction. He needed all his self-control to keep from flinching back, as he remembered how those filaments had found a grip on him once before – and what had then followed...
Yet his primary concern was for Glr. If her mind had been trapped by the Arachnis link, if only for a moment, she Would now be in the grip of that shattering agony of sudden release.
But as she wheeled towards the gantry, wings booming, her voice came into his mind, seeming unaffected.
Get back, Keill, while you can!
But Keill stood his ground. Wielding one gun in scythe-sweeps across the tendrils that lashed in his direction, he leaned over and fired the other beam in a steady burst down into the well of the shaft. As he did so, he saw with a jolt of surprise that the Arachnis monster, glowing in all the shifting colours of the luminous energy around it, had grown immensely. The ovoid shape now filled the entire breadth of the shaft, and bulged upwards almost to the height of the gantry.
Surprise also jolted him when the furious beam of his energy-gun had no effect, except to create a small patch of extra brightness where it struck the rippling blaze of the energised surface.
No use! Glr cried as she wheeled above him, evading the clutching grasp of more tendrils. It lives on energy!
Keill nodded to himself. The energies that bathed Arachnis did not extend upwards to protect the tendrils, but would certainly absorb the blast of his gun when aimed at the body of the matter. At once he shifted the crackling beam of his gun to the wall of the shaft itself, which held the complex mechanisms and power sources that were the monster's life support. But the energised metal showed no more effect than had Arachnis itself.
Keill's left-hand gun was still sweeping its beam back and forth through the air, to keep the grasping tendrils at bay from himself and Glr. It seemed that for every dozen that he cut down, several dozens more flailed up to take their place. There must have been hundreds upon hundreds of thousands, now, of the tendril extensions from the vastly enlarged body of Arachnis.
And if neither the body nor the shaft that supported it could be harmed... how could it be destroyed?
Below him he saw the ends of the tendrils he had severed, drifting down to the upper surface of the monster. They vanished at once, vaporised in a flare of radiance by those swirling luminous energies.
Come away!Glr's voice entered his mind like a whip. Guns are no use against it – but it is helpless without the Twenty-four!
Her broad wings swept her towards the door that had led Keill on to the gantry, and he followed her at once. Of course she was right. Even though Arachnis could not be harmed by a hand-gun – and maybe not even by my ship's guns, he thought bleakly – it was not the true enemy.
If he could find the Twenty-four and deal with them, Arachnis would no longer be guided by a superintelligence, and would be rendered nearly harmless.
If...
Outside the door they paused. Glr wheeled down to settle on his shoulder, small fingers clutching him in a fierce clasp.
I feared that the massed force of the Deathwing might be too much even for you,she said.
Keill smiled fiercely. 'They may have thought the same. Shows the danger of over-confidence.'
Then his expression grew serious. 'But how did you get tangled with Arachnis?'
I was coming by another route, Glr replied, annoyance in her voice, to see if I could aid you.
But before I reached you, The One burst out of the room – and when he began firing at me, I fled.
The door I chose led to Arachnis, and it caught me before I could escape.
'
And your mind..?' Keill asked worriedly.
The Arachnis link is made to enslave human minds,Glr laughed. I shielded against it with no difficulty. That is why the Twenty-four were using it to drag me down and kill me with its energies – until you came along.
'That's more of my debt repaid,' Keill said. His mouth tightened. 'And there are still some debts to pay here, before we're done.'
Glr agreed. The One has joined the Twenty-four, she announced. I can sense their minds, though I cannot look into them.
'Where are they?' Keill asked urgently. He had seen no sign of a spacious alcove in the wall of the Arachnis shaft, as there had been on Golvic.
On the other side of the shaft wall, Glr told him. The heavier tendrils that link them to Arachnis now pass through the base of the wall.
Into his mind she projected a picture, a diagrammatic map of the asteroid's interior. A glowing spot of light indicated a spacious room – close by, and on the same level where Keill was standing.
'Right,' Keill said quietly. 'I'll go and visit them.'
Keill, we must be careful... Glr began.
'Not we ,' Keill interrupted. He gestured towards the door to the recreation room, down the corridor, where smoke was drifting out, a hint of the carnage that had occurred within it. 'Talis is in there-probably still unconscious, but alive. He's an Arachnis slave, like you said. You must help him.'
Glr was quiet for a moment. I would like to come with you, she said at last, but you are right.
Talis needs me.
'You can free him, safely?' Keill asked.
I believe so. He is old, but his mind is strong and clear. And he has not been under their control as long as you were. He should survive.
'Good.' Keill grinned tautly. 'I'll try to do the same.'
Keill.Glr's voice was heavy with concern. The Twenty-four will be much more powerful, now that Arachnis has enlarged so greatly. I can sense terrible strengths within their united mind. And they and The One will be waiting for you.
'I know,' Keill said harshly. 'I'm counting on it.'
---
Once again, Keill plunged into the network of corridors. But this time his route was more direct – and he met no opposition on his way to the room that Glr's mental map had indicated.
