by Douglas Hill
Keill’s fingertips issued more instructions to his computer, which searched its prodigious memory for the position of the planet Saltrenius, found it, and set its course.
On the viewscreens the points of light shimmered, blurred. The computer was obediently taking the ship out of planetary drive and into ‘Overlight’ – in which a ship could cross the breadth of the galaxy in only days.
The viewscreens went blank. A formless void gathered round Keill and his ship. In Overlight, he no longer existed in the normal universe. Moving unfathomable times faster than the speed of light, the ship had entered a non-place, leaving space and time behind it. Only Keill’s inner time sense remained, to note the computer’s estimate of arrival at Saltrenius in about ten hours.
He settled back against the slingseat, letting his eyes close wearily. It had been a long and active night – and somewhere, behind his rigid control, the pain still flamed and seared throughout his body.
Yet he felt a fierce gladness as sleep began to close round him. At least there was a chance now that he would find others of his kind, before he died. And perhaps then he would also find answers to all his questions. Even, if fortune willed it, a chance to wreak the bitter, hate-filled vengeance that blazed within him more fiercely than any physical pain.
But that thought, all thought, faded as he drifted into sleep. And with sleep, as if from the grey emptiness that surrounded his speeding ship, came the dreams.
CHAPTER TWO
The dreams were fragmentary at first, as they always were. Broken, fleeting visions of a landscape – of a bleak and inhospitable world, dominated by chill expanses of desert, by towering ranges of rock-fanged mountains.
It was Keill Randor’s world – the planet Moros, in the system of a white star on the outer reaches of the Inhabited Galaxy. A harsh world it was, a harsh life it gave to the space colonists who had made it their home so long ago, during the centuries of the Scattering – the time when the human race had spread itself out through the many millions of planets in the galaxy, to seek those thousands that could support human life.
Moros was one of them, for at least it had breathable air, with water and thin vegetation grudgingly available in its central regions. It also had a variety of its own life forms – the venomous reptiles of many weird shapes, the deadly sand cats, the huge, horned mammoths of the mountains, the tangled vine growths that fed on flesh – all as dangerous and threatening as the desert itself.
Yet they had survived, those early spacefarers – survived and adapted to their new home. And its rigours made them and their offspring tough, resourceful, self-reliant people, who even so had learned the need for order, stability and discipline in their lives. There was room for little else, from the beginning, if humans were to survive on Moros.
Yet the discipline was not imposed, from above. It was accepted, as a religion is accepted, by every human inhabitant of that world. It was taught to the children before they were weaned. It became a basic reality of life.
In the same way, as they learned to order and discipline themselves, so the humans of Moros learned to fight to protect themselves. Fighting, against the alien beasts, the cruel environment, was also a reality of life, was essential for life itself. The people of Moros taught themselves and their children everything they needed to know for survival, in every kind of deadly circumstance. And that included a strict schooling in forms of self-defence and combat, unarmed or with a wide array of weaponry.
So the people lived, their numbers grew, even finding a share of contentment and satisfaction in the relentless hardships of their rugged, austere lives. But Moros was a poor planet, with little to offer the rest of the galaxy in trade. For centuries it remained mostly alone, unvisited. And all that time its people developed and refined their special way of life, becoming more fiercely independent, self-sufficient, at one with themselves. They also became a planetful of the most skilled, most effective fighting men and women in the galaxy.
Yet the people of Moros never lost that earliest sense of total commitment. In their world, communality ruled – cooperation, sharing, mutual aid and support. The people of Moros did not fight among themselves. All competition was relegated to an annual festival, the Martial Games. In their way of life, private greed, destructive ambition, selfish indifference to the needs of others – such anti-social, anti-survival ways were almost unknown.
Slowly, other human-inhabited planets in that region of the galaxy became aware of the uniqueness of Moros. And others saw what the people of Moros had not realized – that theirs was not truly a poor planet, for it had a special and valuable natural resource.
It had the martial skills of its population.
Gradually, the people of Moros were invited to use that resource, to trade with it as if it were minerals or food products. They took their skills out into the galaxy, small groups of fighting men and women, hired – at substantial sums – to fight in small wars on this planet or that. They became what, in an ancient human language, had once been called mercenaries. But they felt no shame in doing so, nor was any put upon them.
They learned just how supremely skilled they were, compared to other soldiers in the Inhabited Worlds.
And the rest of the galaxy learned as well. Soon more offers were coming in then could be accepted, and Moros began to know a measure of wealth.
With that income – held in common, like most property on the planet – the people of Moros acquired new, up-to-date equipment and weapons. They bought spaceships, from one-man fighters to vast battle cruisers, and created a formidable fleet. They visited other worlds, studied other advanced combat techniques and took them home for their people to master them. So they organized themselves into an armed force that could, if needed, include every adult on the planet. It was a force that became legendary throughout the galaxy.
The Legions of Moros.
Even then, even though any army needs carefully drawn lines and levels of command, the communal spirit of Moros was not impaired. Nor was the order and discipline: discord, slacking, disobedience were unknown, and would have been shocking notions to any legionary. In battle, some led and others followed, but they did so in order that every section and unit would operate like a finely tuned machine.
Otherwise the legionaries shared their lives as equals – working together, going into combat together, celebrating victories together.
And, in the end, dying together.
(Keill Randor’s dream shifted, as it always did, and the broken, fleeting images gathered, held steady.
From the depths of his sleeping darkness Keill moaned, as the dream-memory rose, clear and terrible – of the words he had heard from his ship’s communicator that day...) He had been sent, with the other one-person ships of his Strike Group, on a simple reconnaissance mission. But it was more than halfway across the galaxy, and in one of the most densely populated sectors, where human worlds and their stars clustered like – as the Morosian saying had it – sand fleas at an oasis.
Keill and his Group had come out of Overlight and were moving on ordinary planetary drive towards their objective – a small planet where a local war looked like expanding into a major conflict, and where the Legions had been offered a huge sum to join in on one side.
The Strike Group’s mission was simply to gather data, to study the planet from orbit, to assess the war potential, to monitor broadcasts and so on. This data would help the Central Command of the Legions to decide whether to take up the offer.
For the Legions, by then, could pick and choose among contracts. And their ethic, born of their history, would not allow them to take the side of aggressors, or fanatics, or would-be exploiters.
Often they had fought, for less payment, on the side of those defending themselves against just such enemies. Often, indeed, the mere presence of the Legions on the side of the defenders had prevented an aggressor from ever launching a full-scale attack.
As the planet grew larger in their viewscreens, Keill and his group
were checking their inter-ship communications link, preparing to slide into an orbit suitable for scanning the surface of this world. They were not advertising their presence, and hoped to go unnoticed – so Keill was mildly annoyed when he spotted a handful of silvery, tubular shapes rising towards his group through clouds beneath them. A subdued ripple of voices on the communicator showed that the rest of the group had also seen the other ships.
‘Maybe they’re friendly, maybe not,’ Keill said to his group. ‘We’ll ease away on a new course and be ready for evasive action.’
His fingers moved over the controls, programming in the new course that his group would pick up and follow. He kept his eyes firmly on the approaching ships, waiting for some sign of their intention, some communication from them.
As he watched, twin points of light glimmered from the tapering noses of each of the oncoming ships.
Keill clenched his teeth angrily. It was all the sign he needed: he knew an ion-energy beam-gun when he saw one.
‘They’re firing,’ he snapped into his communicator. ‘Amateurs – they’re way out of range still. Begin new course for evasive action.’
‘Do we return fire?’ The voice from the communicator was that of young Oni Wolda, Keill’s next-in-command and his closest friend in the Strike Group. Her voice was calm, but with a faint note of eagerness that made Keill smile.
‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘We’re not here to fight. Evasive action will take us far enough out for Overlight –
that’ll lose them. Then we’ll report back.’
Again he made his course corrections on the control panel. Then he added, ‘I’ll drop back into rear position and find out who this gun-happy bunch belongs to.’
But before any of his group could acknowledge, his communicator hummed for an instant and then spoke, not in the voices of his friends but in the abrasive, metallic tone of a long-range communication.
URGENT MESSAGE FROM HOME PLANET – MESSAGE FROM HOME PLANET.
Keill sat up, startled. Messages seldom came from Moros to legionaries on a mission, unless the legionaries themselves first made contact, to report or to call for reinforcements in an emergency.
The communicator seemed to have plucked the word from his thoughts.
EMERGENCY MESSAGE ALL LEGIONARIES – EMERGENCY ALL LEGIONARIES
PLANET UNDER ATTACK BY UNKNOWN FORCES
ALL LEGIONARIES RETURN TO MOROS AT ONCE – REPEAT RETURN AT ONCE –
PRIORITY ONE ORDER OF CENTRAL COMMAND
Shock turned Keill’s blood to ice. Moros under attack? It had never happened – not in all the centuries.
Who would be foolhardy enough to attack the home world of the galaxy’s most renowned fighting force?
But the words had been spoken, and had to be true.
‘Emergency procedure!’ he shouted. ‘Prepare for Overlight at my signal!’
It was risky, entering Overlight that close to a planet’s gravitational pull, but there was no choice. At once, the terrible order had said – and Keill had no intention of arriving too late, if only by seconds, to be of use.
His fingers flowed over the controls, making his ship ready for Overlight. His hand was hovering over the activator, his mouth beginning to form the order to his group, when his ship jerked and leaped beneath him like a startled animal.
Furious, he glanced at his rear viewscreen. He had nearly forgotten the other ships, in the shock of the message from Moros. And because he had dropped back into the rear position of his group, he had come within range of the others’ beam-guns. One of them had got lucky: he had been hit.
It would take time before his computer could produce a damage report – but he could feel his ship slowing, juddering slightly. Behind him the attacking ships were closing the gap, still firing wildly.
All he could do was to take his group into safety – and hope desperately that it was not his Overlight drive that had been damaged.
‘Ready to enter Overlight,’ he snapped, ’now!’
His hand punched the activator – and the formless void gathered him in.
Though in Overlight, a ship seemed to be at rest, motionless, while leaping across the unimaginable distances, there were many special stresses and pressures within the void. It was a place from which a damaged ship might very well never emerge.
So Keill sweated and waited for the computer’s damage report. It came in seconds, but they seemed like hours.
Damage recorded from energy beam contact Hull sector eight-A Keill’s heart sank. It was a forward sector of the ship’s hull, holding some of the weaponry and much of the navigational equipment. The computer went on, confirming his fears: Hull buckled but unbroken, and holding One forward beam-gun inoperable Navigation system planetary drive inoperable
Keill reached for the computer keys. Report status of Overlight drive, he ordered, and other systems.
The obedient computer replied at once. Overlight drive undamaged Other weapons systems undamaged Life support systems undamaged Communications system undamaged Relief left Keill sagging back into his slingseat. The Over-light was intact. The emptiness beyond space would not claim him.
He touched the keys again. Estimate repair time for planetary drive and damaged weapons, he ordered.
E R T for damaged beam-gun nil Weapon not repairable Full replacement required E R T for navigation system six hours
He cursed softly. Six hours! He begrudged every moment that he was in Overlight – yet now he would need to work for six hours before his planetary drive could take him to his planet’s aid. And even then he would arrive with part of his armament out of action.
But there was nothing he could do. No one went outside a ship in Overlight. No repairs could be begun until he emerged into normal space, many hours from then.
Gritting his teeth, he fingered the keys again. At least he could occupy himself usefully during the agonising wait – as legionaries were trained to do. Begin full check of all equipment and systems, he ordered, other than damaged sector.
And he turned his full, disciplined concentration on to the laborious routine check, while his crippled ship plunged ahead through an emptiness as unknowable as the future.
CHAPTER THREE
(The dream-memories were gathering pace now, and Keill writhed in his sleep, powerless to stop his unconscious mind from forming the images that he had re-lived so often before, in horror and despair...) The time of waiting had ground finally to its end, and the ships of Keill’s Strike Group came out of Overlight. They had re-entered normal space at a maximal orbital distance: legionaries did not plunge blindly into confrontations without knowing what they were confronting.
But, as Keill studied the face of the planet Moros looming and filling his viewscreen, all seemed puzzlingly calm and normal. There was a faint, hazy aura round the image of the planet, but Keill discounted that as a possible minor malfunction of the screen, to do with the damage his ship had suffered. Certainly his ship sensors reported no other ships of any sort within the planet’s range, and no form of attack going on.
At least, then, his Group seemed to be in no visible danger. So he sent the other ships curving away in their approach path to the planet’s surface. And he dragged on a spacesuit, trudged but on to the ship’s exterior, and began with desperate speed to work on his damaged navigation system.
The computer’s estimate was accurate: more than two hours later, the work was only half done. Keill sweated and fumed as he laboured – yet his hands remained deft, controlled, and his concentration remained complete.
Until it was broken by the warning, from the computer in his helmet communicator, that the sensors had picked up a lone ship, approaching fast from the planet’s surface.
Keill was back at his controls in seconds, readying his undamaged weapons, examining in his screen the glinting speck of metal that was sweeping towards him.
Then it was close enough for him to recognize the blue circlet embossed on its side, and his battle-readiness relaxed.
It was one of the ships from his own Strike Group – the ship of Oni Wolda.
Keill waited tensely while the other ship slid into parallel orbit. Then, as he expected, the communicator came to life. It did so with a cracking buzz that indicated strong interference – which might have puzzled Keill, had not the words themselves driven all other thoughts from his mind.
‘Oni Wolda to Keill Randor Oni to Keill The planet is dead The whole planet Every person Every living thing Nothing left alive on the surface.’
The horror took hold of Keill, stopping his breathing, seeming to squeeze his heart in its icy grip. Even the communicator paused, as if Oni herself could not find words to follow the enormity of that statement.
‘Attack came with no warning Unknown radiation released over entire planet Central Command set up a beacon, before they died, to warn groups like ours But too much interference Too weak We did not pick up the warning till too late.’
Too late? The words echoed in Keill’s shocked mind as Oni went on.
‘Keill Pain began in us almost at once Knew what it meant Nothing to be done Rest of Group went on to land To die on Moros with the others I came to stop you Don’t know if you’re safe even this far out.’
Keill’s face twisted, his body hunched, aching, torn with a grief that was inconsolable, a fury that was beyond bearing. Oni’s voice went on, though Keill had already anticipated the rest of the terrible message.
‘This is a recording Keill I am dying too Will be dead when you hear this Go Overlight and get away Do not approach planet Nothing to be seen or done Save yourself if you still can Warn other legionaries if there are any alive
‘And if you live try to find who did this evil Avenge us Keill Avenge the murder of Moros.’
For a long time – too long – Keill sat motionless, while grief and horror and savage rage tore at his sanity. But in the end some of the strength of his mind and will returned. He forced his numb fingers to the controls, and sent his ship into Over-light.