There was no possible escape for the ghosts, and very little room in which to move. They were pinned down. But there was no escape for them in any case. Within hours they would simply fade away as though they had never been, when the Time Wave lost all control of its own rhythm. They dropped into the reeds, crouched in the mud and warmed their way around on their bellies. In complete contrast, the toys came forward in orderly lines, walking proud and upright, wearing the beautiful uniform which their creator had given them for a body.
And the dark, filthy waters of the River of Tears stirred and splashed as a third force arrayed itself with the ghosts, against the toys. They carried no rifles. They carried no weapons at all.
Because Darkscar of Despair had given the frog people no hands with which to carry weapons.
HAWKANGEL
Martin Hawkangel has been accused of cowardice, but that is totally unfair. He is as brave a man as any of the Beast heroes. When he ran from the House of Stars on the eve of the bloodbath which marked the climax of the war, it was not fear which prompted him. It was the realization that the Human Empire was bound to fail, that neither Starcastle nor Starflare was fit to rule the galaxy, and that the war he was fighting was no longer his concern. He knew that the objectives the war had claimed were already dead. Starbird was gone and Angeline had ceased to matter either to Humans or Beasts. The days of glory were long gone, and the matter of honor had been drowned in personal ambition, hatred and weakness. Hawkangel refused to have any part in the defense of the House of Stars, and so he followed Christopher Rainstar into voluntary exile.
When Ralph Eagleheart began his short-lived crusade to achieve the genocide of the Human race, Hawkangel was still in space with a hundred and twenty ships and no destination. While he listened to Eagleheart’s powerful voice calling for murder in every part of the galaxy, he knew that the Kingdom of the Beasts had arrived and there was no safe place in the civilized galaxy. Eventually he went to the rim stars, right out on the edge where it was dangerous to go in case they were carried outside the galaxy and could never realign using the computers.
The life of his people out there was a strange one, a life of isolation and introversion. Once Eagleheart was dead, and time had passed, there was no need to be afraid of returning to the civilized worlds. But they had no home there. They no longer belonged. Home itself was no longer a home—it was a grave.
They wanted to go back, some of them at least, but they could not and would not. But they listened to the myriad voices of the Kingdom of the Beasts, on high-omega, and they knew all about the new threat to the galaxy. Hawkangel was very much Darkscar’s soul mate. He believed as implicitly as the collector in order and harmony. He, too, saw the conquest by Heljanita’s toys as the ultimate evil. He knew that he would have to go back and fight—and perhaps win a new place in the future of the races of man. Hawkangel needed Heljanita. Hawkangel needed to hate Heljanita with all the fury he could muster.
Hawkangel is a man who needs happiness desperately.
He longs for the contentment and protection that Dark-scar’s kind of Utopia could give him. He is a stranger in this time, doomed to be an outsider no matter how close he is to the center of the galaxy. But he is a brave man and a strong one. He is prepared to fight for the slightest chance of achieving his dream.
Like all the other men involved with the battle of Saraca, he is fighting for something which is either impossible or worthless. But he is also staking a claim to determine some part of whatever future remains after the war.
THE BATTLE OF SARACA
With a mere eighty ships Richard Stormwind cut die toys apart and kept them apart. The toys pursued their usual policy of letting him go and waiting for his attack to fall to pieces of its own accord, It was obviously uneconomical to lose ships in breaking Stormwind’s formation, and the handful of ships could gain nothing. There were too few of them, and the battle was already spread too far and wide for him to enable the Confederacy’s fleet to regain formation. In addition, both the Falcor and the Aurita were under such severe pressure that there was no commander to reform the Beasts.
And so Stormwind was allowed to fly his ships through the battle of Saraca, unchallenged and largely unproductive. All he could do was prolong the battle, and the toys had no objection at all to that. They did not get tired, and they were jealously guarding their firepower until the moment when it would become most useful. The one thing which the toys did not anticipate was the arrival of more reinforcements.
But more ships came in tight formation. Martin Hawk-angel and Christopher Rainstar led the Humans to the aid of the Beasts, and the toys faced yet another enemy. They had ships as good as most of those in the Confereracy fleet, and they had nearly two hundred of them. When Rainstar had left the House of Stars, he had taken only four ships, but Martin Hawkangel had taken his entire contingent of a hundred and twenty, and some sixty or seventy more had found their way out to the rim stars as the Humans had fled from the hysterical slaughter following the battle in the House of Stars, or simply abandoned the Kingdom of the Beasts to its new rulers. Word had permeated Human society as to where Hawkangel was, and it is probable that many of the Beasts knew as well.
The ships were somewhat undermanned and in many cases carried only one or two guns, but it was their number and their formation which mattered. They arrived to take advantage of all the time which Rayshade had gained and which Stormwind was still gaining. The Confederacy’s flagging defiance was suddenly revitalized. A slim chance to hang on had now become a very real opportunity to regroup. If Hawkangel could keep the toys dissipated, the Beasts might yet get back into the battle.
The toys also saw the danger. They had given too much away by their careful, calculated minimization of casualties. They had won the battle only to have it snatched back into the balance by events which had no right to happen.
At last, the toys threw themselves into the attack. They had given away too much time already. The Beasts could not be allowed to regroup.
The moment Rayshade realized what was happening, he saw the chance of winning the battle staring him in the face. It was obvious that the fleet could not regroup around the battleships, but the battleships could, in their own way, be just as troublesome to the toys as the small formations that were cutting them up. Without hesitation, Rayshade turned command over to Daniel Skywolf and began to look after his own problems. The toys could cut off and surround the bigger ships, but they had no chance of identifying and isolating Skywolf.
The tiny clusters of ships that were the ghosts and the Humans harried the toys like sheepdogs controlling a flock of sheep. The ghost formation should have broken up long ago but it was still together, held in some miraculous fashion by its leader—Stormwind of Sabella.
And the Beasts began to gather around Skywolf and the Canides. The toys were left scattered all over the sky. It was painfully slow, and a monstrously difficult job for a man like Skywolf. The toys were making their presence really felt now in terms of dead ships. But the toys lost more than the Beasts, consistently and continuously.
The toys worked harder, but they could work no faster. It still took too much time to analyze the situation completely, and the toys would accept nothing less than a complete analysis before deciding upon a course of action. Incredibly, they seemed to be losing. Something had to be done. In the long run, Hawkangel and Stormwind were not powerful enough to tip the balance. And there were still not enough Confederacy ships. But the battleships were a constant and growing problem. They had too many guns and too much firepower. One or both would have to be destroyed before the toys could be sure of regaining the upper hand.
Therefore, in a coldly logical fashion the toys decided to destroy the Falcor and the Aurita at all costs, before it was too late.
CHAOS’S STORY CONTINUED
“Put the rifle down,” instructed Heljanita. I hadn’t realized that I was still hanging on to it. I dropped it quickly and clenched my fists to show that I wasn’t
contemplating picking it up again. I looked down at Pia. She wasn’t moving, but the blood had more or less stopped leaking. I couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead. Then I looked back at Heljanita.
He was scared. That struck me as strange. He held the gun, and there was still at least one armed toy remaining. Was Darkscar causing trouble? I wondered. I also wondered why he hadn’t already killed us if he was so scared.
The room was small and square. The whole of one wall was covered by the most elaborate and complex high-omega apparatus that I had ever seen. It had a viewscreen, a whole array of receiving terminals, and a whole lot of dials and switches that I didn’t understand.
As soon as the toy had us covered with the rifle, Heljanita stepped back to the console, not taking either his eyes or his gun away from us. He flicked two switches, but nothing happened that I could see. Heljanita lifted something to his ear and listened. I guessed that there was something he didn’t want us to hear.
“What now?” I asked, to divert his attention.
“Quiet,” he ordered, suitably annoyed.
There were four of us still loose, I reflected. There was still hope. We waited in silence. Long seconds dragged by, and I could see that there was something worrying Heljanita more and more. I was pleased to see that, although the gathering tension was making me increasingly frightened.
Then there was a purr from the direction of the console; it might have come from the earphone. Heljanita put the device down and pressed some switches. He didn’t look nearly so worried now.
“Step over there,” he said, directing me well away from the door and my rifle but not close enough to the high-omega for me to reach any switches.
The door opened, and the toy stepped soundlessly aside, out of the way and out of sight.
Darkscar came through, rifle leveled. He was alone. He saw Pia, Heljanita, Comarre and myself, but not the toy.
“Drop the gun,” he said to Heljanita, and then the toy brought a silver fist down on top of his left thumb. The barrel of the gun went downwards, and Darkscar cried with pain as it wrenched his trigger finger. The toy kicked him in the side and sent him crashing into the wall. The collector tried desperately to raise the gun again, but the toy was by him before he could move and removed the gun gently but firmly from his hands.
Darkscar stood up, looking quite stricken. I felt almost sorry for him.
“The others?” I asked him.
“They’re all dead,” he replied. I could tell from his tone that he was telling the truth, not trying to lure Heljanita into a false sense of security.
Heljanita looked round at each of us. He was on top now, and he knew it. But he was still scared. Of what, I didn’t know.
“There are no more toys,” said Darkscar to me. “We got them all, except for this one.” He joined us in our line against the blank wall. Heljanita picked up my rifle and put it to one side. The toy had both of the other two, one in each hand, its slender fingers having no difficulty in coping with the weight.
“I should have expected this,” said Heljanita. “I knew you well enough. But you were always so slow. And you, Lord Chaos—you find yourself everywhere, don’t you?”
I weighed the possibilities of jumping the toy and leaving Heljanita to providence and the other two. There wasn’t a chance, so I decided to stay defeated. Heljanita was showing a marked reluctance to kill us.
“The toys are winning the war,” said Heljanita. “Nothing can stop me now. The ships of the Confederacy are being scattered and smashed. The other fleet was beaten some time ago.”
“The battleships will defeat you,” said Darkscar.
Heljanita seemed totally unworried by the prediction. “Twenty of them might stand some chance,” he said. “With adequate support. But two of them are just a splendid piece of nonsense. Toys, my friend. Shielding and guns are no good at all if they can’t move fast enough. Your battleships are too slow. They depend too much on the imperfect reflexes of the men flying them. They add interest to the battle, but they can’t win it.”
“They have every chance.”
“I have seven thousand ships in space. The Confederacy has hardly half that number. My ships are better, and they are flown by toys, who are the superiors of men in terms of speed, accuracy and determination.”
“Deathdancer and Rayshade are very determined men,” I said quietly. “The toys don’t compare.”
Heljanita transferred his arisocratic stare to me. I thought for the first time how much alike he and Darkscar really were in appearance, in manner, in voice.
“You seem to be a very determined man,” said Heljanita. “I created you, but now I hardly know what to do with you. You’re not dangerous anymore, but I wonder whether I can trust you. Despite what I did, you escaped from the influence of the crooked wheel, and now you’re harboring a grudge. I suppose you are still Adam December’s child in Adam December’s galaxy. The nature of the Beast But all that will change soon.”
“You didn’t make me,” I said. “You gave me one or two things, and you took one or two things. If I owe you anything, it was paid back in the Beast war and the massacre on Home. My soul is my own.”
“Your soul is Darkscar’s,” he retorted.
I shook my head.
“You came here with Darkscar. You fight and kill for Darkscar. If you could, you’d have killed me for Darkscar.”
“Not for Darkscar. I came here for myself. If I kill you, it will be for myself. You are dangerous. You have tried to kill me several times. It is nothing to do with Darkscar.”
“I told you that I didn’t want to kill you. I offered you a chance to fight on my side instead of on his. When will you learn that you can’t be uncommitted. There are only two sides in this war.
“I’m not your enemy. I’m no one’s enemy. No one except Adam December’s ghost and Darkscar of Despair; the ghost of my world, or the world which bore me. You’re alive now, Lord Chaos. I have a gun in my hand, but I haven’t killed you. I’m only a man, Lord Chaos. I don’t want to kill you any more than I wanted to kill Storm-wind or the House of Stars. It simply had to be done.”
“There was no reason,” I said.
Heljanita looked at me with what was almost disbelief.
“He’s mad,” muttered Darkscar.
“Why did Flayr die?” I asked the toymaker, ignoring the man beside me. “What was the reason for killing Pal-moon, or Lavault?”
“That was eight years ago now,” replied Heljanita. “I was a fugitive then, a man with half a dozen toys and great dreams. Seven years ago, you were a threat to me. You could have united the Beasts. Your crewmen were just steppingstones to you. I had to get rid of you then, before you could do anything to stop me.”
I stopped arguing with him. I knew he was wrong. He was lying. I could never have united the Beasts. Only Eagleheart could have done that. And were the united Beast races so much more frightening than the Confederacy? What could I have done that Cain Rayshade could not do? I was never a threat to. Heljanita until the moment that I landed on Aeterna, determined to find him and—if possible—kill him.
I wondered whether he could possibly believe what he was saying. I could believe that he was reluctant to pull the trigger himself. He was a subtle man, not a fighter. His kind of weapon was the crooked wheel not the gun. But I could not believe that he was reluctant to have his toys kill, provided that it was out of sight. And I was absolutely certain that if I tried to attack him, he would shoot me.
There was a purring noise from the high-omega, and Heljanita turned quickly, whirling a knob. The sweet, melodious voice of a toy suddenly filled the room.
“We have sustained extensive damage,” reported the toy. “Two formations of reinforcements have forced us to reconsider our tactics. The extermination of the battleships is proving both difficult and costly. We are concentrating all our attention on the Falcor, based on the calculation that its elimination would give us a lasting advantage. The enemy has sustained substanti
al casualties, but is still attacking.”
Heljanita turned to face the tiny viewscreen. The pistol dropped to his side. He manipulated the controls, and obtained a clear pattern of silver dots. The image seemed meaningless for a few moments, and then I realized that it was the image seen in the control screen of a ship, standing some way off from the battle. I couldn’t tell the dots apart from where I was standing.
“Coordinates!” snapped Heljanita, and the toy reeled off a long string of figures telling the toymaker where each individual force was to be seen on the screen.
“The formations which are keeping us apart are no lasting threat,” continued the toy. “Neither are the regrouping ships of the Confederacy. Our analyses clearly show that we still have the advantage and will continue to hold it for some time. If during that time the battleships are destroyed, then nothing can stop us.”
“Destroy the battleships at whatever cost,” ordered Heljanita, somewhat unnecessarily.
His hands rested on the console in front of him, the gun held laxly in his right hand. I eyed the toy which held the rifles, and its lidless red eyes stared unwaveringly back Heljanita’s eyes were glued to the viewscreen, but the toy was watching our every move.
Pia opened an eye.
I saw her out of the comer of my own eye and hurriedly looked back at Heljanita.
“The Beast ships are beginning to regroup,” reported the tuneful voice. “The Aurita is swinging away to join them. The Falcor is isolated, and our analyses show that it will soon be under our control. We are preparing to retreat and regroup as soon as the Falcor is eliminated.”
Heljanita remained entranced.
“The remnant of the fleet from the Time Gap now numbers only thirty ships,” droned the toy. “They are losing their effect. The reinforcements are also suffering heavy losses. The Confederacy ships are failing to regain an adequate configuration. Casualties are not as frequent. If we can retreat to regroup, we may regain control.”
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