by Sales, Ian
More shapes materialised on the parapet. Thumps and thuds echoed as yet more dropped into the trench behind the troopers.
The assassins rushed forwards. Taking position in the centre of the trench, Ahasz fought off the three attackers who reached him first. A parry, step inside, point to the chest of another assassin. Blade back, elbow the attacker behind him in the face, twist to avoid a sword sliding past his ribs. Lob his sword to his other hand, that elbow high, stab. The assassin went down as the point pierce his forehead.
An assassin launched himself from the parapet, trying to land amidst the troopers. A mace took him in mid-air, swatted him to one side, his head a mashed ruin. The other attackers squatted and used their swords as a wall of points to pen the duke and the troopers in the centre of the trench.
Ahasz parried blades aside, leaving his own in the right quarter for a riposte. Another assassin fell. For each one that hit the ground and lay still, another took his place. Ahasz had killed six. Now they were stepping over and on their comrades’ bodies to attack. Their footing insecure, they were easier opponents. Two, the duke simply lunged and stabbed through the heart. They could not defend.
Behind him, Ahasz heard the sounds of heavy hammer- and mace-heads impacting flesh. A black-clad figure stumbled past him, a smashed arm held to its chest. He stabbed it through the neck.
One assassin threw himself forward and impaled himself on Ahasz’s blade, dragging the sword down to the ground. Directly behind him, another assassin lunged, arm stretched, sword a line extending forward.
Ahasz followed his sword downward. The assassin’s point passed over his head. The duke reached forward, grabbed the attacker’s ankles. And pulled. Down he went. His sword tumbled from his grasp. Ahasz grabbed it and, held like a dagger, stabbed it in the fallen man’s throat. He left him pinned to the boardwalk while he retrieved his own sword.
Ahasz waited breathlessly, peering at the shadowed corner from which the assassins had sprung. No more appeared. Something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He spun back. To see an assassin fall sprawling to the trench floor from the parapet. A tall trooper flashed the duke a grin and turned to swing his mace at another assassin.
A blade burst from his jaw. A dark shape squatted over him. From the top of the trooper’s head, a thin black line led to the assassin’s hand. The trooper crumpled; the sword piercing his brain slid loose.
Five of the eight gamers still survived. Ahasz could not tell if any were wounded. In the poor lighting, on red jackets, blood could not be seen. They faced three assassins, joined by another four as the last of those on the parapet leapt into the fray.
Keeping a wary eye open, Ahasz watched the troopers fight. Their weapons did not have the reach of the assassins’ swords. But neither could their weapons be handily batted aside. Unmindful of cuts and stabs, they swung their maces and hammers. The assassins were bunched too closely for them to fail to hit at least one.
One attacker dropped, a hammer glancing off his skull. Another moved to take his place, stepping into a downward swing of a mace. He dropped bonelessly beneath it.
Someone threw an axe. It embedded itself in an assassin’s shoulder. He dropped his sword. A hammer finished him off.
Two maces—one had missed its target—swung together, an assassin’s head caught between them. The assassin’s head seemed to burst under the impact of the two blunt weapons. His mask lost its shape, collapsed in on itself.
One of the troopers fell back as a sword took him in the chest. The remaining four advanced in pairs on the last two assassins. They did not run, but calmly faced the troopers. One lunged too soon. A trooper swore as he was pinked on the arm. The assassin flew back as a hammer hit him in the face. The last went down beneath blows from three troopers.
It was over. Ahasz heard a muttered swear word behind him—one of the fallen troopers was only wounded. The duke stepped forward. He bent to the nearest dead assassin, grabbed a handful of black mask and pulled. He already knew what he would see. What he didn’t understand was why.
Sessum. The assassin bore the face of a Sessum.
And the body beside him: Isten.
Another Sessum, and a Sina…
The assassins were Urbat. Clones.
The clones were loyal to Ahasz. They were his assassins. He controlled them. Except…
Ahasz’s masters. They supplied the Urbat. They bred them and trained them somewhere. He had never known the details, just accepted the army of night killers as his to do with as he wished.
He sighed. His master—ex-masters!—now knew he no longer followed their orders. Someone had informed them. There was only one person who could have done so. Knowing that, Ahasz felt sorrow, regret.
Now, more than ever before, he felt alone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
This was Lexander Lotsman’s first visit to Shuto, the capital world of the Empire, but he had imagined how it would be. There would be great cities of close-packed tenements, vast farms to feed the teeming masses, verdant parkland and other artful landscapes for the nobility, imposing palaces and even more magnificent ministries and government buildings…
He had not expected this. Not this rolling tundra of grass, yellow and barren like the skin of the very old, stretching from horizon to horizon, as featureless as paper. He had piloted Desert Runner down from orbit, through a cloudless blue sky to one hundred feet above this endless plain. It tricked and confused the eye, making distance and altitude difficult to judge. He did not want to plough Desert Runner into the ground, to write a miles-long exclamation mark of brown on the yellow land. He’d lived through one crash already this year. And he suspected no one aboard would survive should the sloop impact the plain. She would disintegrate. The authorities would be looking for pieces of her for weeks.
He flew Desert Runner chiefly on instruments. At the speed they were travelling, their low altitude did not leave much room for mistakes. He couldn’t have done this in hilly country, not in so large a vessel. Desert Runner was a sloop—a ship, not a boat. She was not designed for high-speed low-level flight. The slightest twitch on the helm, and…
It didn’t bear thinking about.
The roar of the gas-rockets was a constant reminder of their speed. Lotsman could see the sloop’s shadow racing across the ground ahead of her prow. There were no landmarks by which to judge speed. A thunderous crack rolled across the land like a gathering storm. Desert Runner was no longer supersonic.
Lotsman leaned forward in his seat and peered through the control cupola’s viewports. Something dark and indistinct had rolled over the horizon ahead of them and was now approaching fast. As the sloop sped nearer, details became apparent, lines and shapes congealing out of the dark mass.
An aerodrome.
Where was the runway?
There it was, creeping across the ground towards Desert Runner. The approach angle was not exact. Lotsman gently touched the helm, banking the sloop to starboard, then moments later, banking to port. He flew by eye now. All Desert Runner’s navigation systems were off, to prevent the ship’s identification by the aerodrome’s registration equipment.
Something pinged. From the corner of his eye, Lotsman saw colour wash across the circular glass of the communications-console. Tovar, in the signaller’s seat, reached out a hand to open the circuit.
“No,” said Lotsman, sharply.
Nothing they could say, no excuse they could dream up, would allay the aerodrome’s suspicions. So they must say nothing.
“Turn it off,” he told the cargo-master. “Just turn it off.”
Tovar did as requested. “I don’t think that was wise,” he said.
“We’re flying a stolen ship and landing on Shuto without clearance,” Lotsman snapped. He could feel a pressure, an incipient headache, building up behind his eyes. “We stopped being wise a long time ago, Adril.”
Behind them, Dai snorted in amusement.
In size and s
hape, Desert Runner was not much different to Divine Providence. In performance, however, she greatly differed. Her topologic drive was of the fastest possible type and her gas-rockets were a great deal more powerful than the data-trader’s had been. She was heavy on the controls, but did not respond as sluggishly as Divine Providence had done. If it hadn’t been for the fact he was piloting Desert Runner less than a hundred feet above a plain at a speed greater than he had flown before… he might well have enjoyed the experience.
“Throttle back on two and four,” he ordered Dai.
She was seated at the artificer’s station at the rear of the control cupola. “Done,” she confirmed.
“The moment we hit the ground, go to reverse thrust. Full. On all four.”
And as he said it, Desert Runner touched down.
She bounced, then dropped a second time. And stayed down. Lotsman stood on the brakes. He heard Dai swear and then the roar of the gas-rockets seemed to change pitch and timbre. He locked his elbows, keeping the yoke pressed as far forward as it would go in the hope it kept the sloop’s nose down. Deceleration bent him forward, made his shoulders ache, his elbows pop and grate. Tovar pitched forward, dinging his head on the console before him. Dai let out a yelp.
The sloop slowed. Faster than was normal, faster than she had been designed to do, she lost the velocity she had gained from orbit. Lotsman could feel her threatening to skid and held her on her line, hands gripping the helm so tight he could no longer feel his fingers.
Her bow dipped lower and Lotsman reared back into his seat. “Cut all rockets,” he shouted.
The silence was sudden. He felt light-headed from its abrupt disappearance. He could hear the wind whipping past the control cupola, the long low screech of the brakes. Now he could see Desert Runner’s bow was beginning to rise, she no longer careered along the runway so dangerously.
It was just as well: they were fast approaching the end of it.
“Oh dear,” said Tovar.
“I see it!” snapped Lotsman. They were going to make it, he thought. It’d be a matter of yards but they’d make it.
The cargo-master was not pointing ahead but off to port. Lotsman risked a glance:
Dark vehicles were spilling onto the apron by the terminal. They turned as one and headed towards the sloop, zipping along a couple of feet above the ground.
Something moved by Lotsman. Dai was out of her seat and up against a scuttle on the port side. She swore loudly. “Fiefal militia,” she said. “Whose coat of arms is a hammer and an anvil, surmounted by a crown and some stars?”
Desert Runner came to a halt and sat oscillating gently on her shocks. Lotsman sighed. He could see yellow grass ahead and to each side of the control cupola. But the forward landing-gear had not left the runway.
Tovar was busy at his console. “Narvian,” he said at length. “Earl of West Tobira.” He’d accessed the sloop’s data-pool with his console and found a heraldic almanac.
“This is an earldom?” asked Lotsman, staring out at the tundra in disbelief. How anyone could live, never mind maintain an earl’s lifestyle, in this barren waste was beyond him.
“Militia are alongside,” Dai said, matter-of-factly. She turned and gazed at Lotsman. “Your plan had better work.”
“It got us this far, didn’t it?” he replied, offended.
“There you go, what I always wanted: death by irony,” she replied. “Travelling halfway across the Empire, only to be captured when we’re on Shuto’s backside.”
Moments later, she added, “They’re at the main hatch.”.
Lotsman powered back the pilot’s chair and scrambled to his feet. He carefully checked that the stolen naval uniform he wore was not creased or crumpled. Turning to Tovar and Dai, he nodded approvingly at their appearance.
Before leaving orbit, all three had dressed in uniforms “borrowed” from the Desert Runner’s crew. Lotsman was a petty officer, the other two were rateds. As disguises went, it was thin at best, but they were hoping the militia troopers would not see beyond the uniforms. Navy personnel came in all shapes and sizes, even if both Lotsman and Dai sported hair much longer than regulation.
They descended the ladder from the control cupola and Lotsman shut the hatch. While Dai and Tovar waited by the entrance to the main airlock, he unscrewed the cover of the control cupola hatch mechanism and made sure the hatch could not be opened again without a great deal of difficulty.
Rejoining his fellow men-at-arms, he drew himself up straight, said, “Here we go,” and hoped they had not lost their acting skills.
Inside the airlock, Tovar undogged and pushed at the outer hatch. It swung weightily open. He released the ladder and it slid clattering to the ground. Lotsman stepped up to the coaming and, standing at Tovar’s shoulder, looked out across the aerodrome. But for the four trucks and single command car parked on the apron, the place appeared deserted and little-used. He dropped his gaze:
A pair of militia troopers were at the foot of the ladder, looking up.
“Quick!” Tovar called down to them. “Our captain’s gone mad! He’s locked himself in the control cupola!”
Lotsman nodded vigorously in agreement.
A militia lieutenant approached. She peered up at the open hatch. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“It’s our skipper,” said Lotsman. “He’s lost his mind—gone proper bonkers, he bloody has.”
Had he laid it on too thick? But the lieutenant didn’t appear suspicious.
“Locked himself in the control cupola,” repeated Tovar.
The lieutenant muttered something under her breath and then put her hands to the ladder. She began to climb. Halfway up, she stopped, looked down and gestured peremptorily for the two troopers to follow her. Once in the airlock, the officer looked to Lotsman, who pointed silently forward. The lieutenant grunted sourly and marched off along the gangway, her troopers behind her.
Tovar grabbed the kit-bag they had stashed in the airlock and scurried down the ladder. Dai and Lotsman followed. As Lotsman set foot on the earth of Shuto, he heard Tovar say, “Your officer said he wants you to go help him. Our captain’s locked himself in the control cupola. He told us to go wait in that truck over there.”
More troopers. Six of them, led by an overweight corporal. They moved with the ill-disciplined air of soldiers who had spent their careers entirely in guard-posts and sentry-boxes.
The corporal gestured noncommitally. He and his troopers came to a halt about the ladder’s foot. They gazed up at the open hatch with disinterest.
This was actually going to work. It was a desperate plan but they might actually pull it off.
“Second truck from the left,” Dai said quietly. “Driver in cab, three troopers in the back.”
“Go!” said Lotsman.
The three of them sprinted across the apron towards the truck. Someone yelled. A trooper moved to stop them but was too far away. He brandished his mace ineffectually. Lotsman reached the truck and vaulted into its rear. He snapped out a punch, catching a trooper in the face. The man went over backwards. The pilot spun about and lashed out with a booted foot. A second trooper folded. Tovar had the third one, a woman. He punched her on the temple, and she dropped backwards and out of the truck.
The vehicle shot forwards. Lotsman swore and grabbed for a handhold. Tovar fell onto his back, but managed to get a hand to a bench support. The truck banked to the left and described a wide arc across the apron.
Lotsman made his way forward until he was at the cab. There was an open hatch in the cab’s rear panel and through it he could see Dai at the wheel. He clambered in to sit beside her.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“How do I bloody know?” Dai replied. “Away from this place. Anywhere.”
They left the aerodrome by its only exit and found themselves on a road which ran straight to the horizon. If there was a town or palace i
n West Tobira, it was nowhere near the aerodrome.
“What a grim place,” Lotsman muttered. “Can you get this thing to go any faster?”
“Flat out now.”
“They was a command car back there at the aerodrome. They could catch us up in that.”
“There might be even faster cars at the terminal,” Tovar added. He was at the hatch to the truck’s rear.
“We have a head-start,” Dai pointed out.
“A couple of minutes at most,” Lotsman replied. He turned to Tovar. “Anything interesting back there?”
“They don’t seem to be following.”
“Too busy trying to get into the control cupola, I expect.”
The aerodrome vanished in the haze of distance to their rear, and the poisonous yellow of the plains spread across the horizon. The land was silent, the only sound the faint whistle of air rushing past the truck’s cab, or the occasional rattle of some loose fitting in its bed. The scenery rushing past did not change, although low humps and gentle undulations could be seen.
The road was straight, a thick black netting through which yellow grass peeked. It narrowed at the horizon ahead.
“What’s that?” Dai asked, pointing forwards.
Lotsman could see nothing.
“The sky…”
Directly ahead, above the horizon, the sky was tinged brown. He could see how the colour seemed to fade into blue at the edges. “The town,” he said, “it must the town. This, what’s it called, West Tobira.”
“Pollution,” Tovar said, nodding.
They saw the brown sky’s source before they saw the town itself. Small pots appeared on the horizon, poking up from the yellow ground, some writing lines of brownish grey on the sky. As they drew closer, the pots grew and extended upwards, and Lotsman realised they were further away and larger than he had first thought. Chimneys, great chimneys. They were scattered to left and right now, their roots hidden over the horizon. They pistoned smoothly upwards, until the factories crouched around their bases rose into view.