by Douglas Hill
'You too,' Keill said softly, aloud. But the Starwind seemed to snatch the words from his mouth, as if mocking the idea that a small winged being could expect to survive the growing power of the storm.
Tam had turned questioningly when he spoke, but Keill silenced him with a gesture. 'Get out of here,' he ordered. 'Find a cave, as deep as you can.'
'And you?' Tam asked doubtfully,
'I'm staying awhile. The Starwind will flatten the tower before long – but first I want to find a way to get at the leader of all this.’
Tam blinked solemnly. 'Iwill stay and fight at your side.’
'You’ve fought enough today, and fought well,’ Keill said. 'It's no longer your fight You'll take cover, and let me do what I'm here for.'
The young Jitrellian straightened. 'If that is your wish. I would not want to impede you. And my world will always remember you with honour.'
'Don't plan my funeral just yet,’ Keill said wryly. 'Now go!’
He watched Tam hurry out into the grip of the wind, vanishing into the swirls of dust almost at once. Then he turned, glancing up at the blank ceiling as if wishing his eyes could pierce the metal.
If only there were some other way to reach the upper levels. He gazed longingly at the elevators, but knew be could not risk that route again...
And as he gazed, a descending disc slid down into his view, crowded with armed clones.
They began firing wildly as soon as they spotted him. He snapped a shot towards them, heard a cry of pain, but the others' beams were sizzling too close around him. And the next disc, he knew, would be bringing more.
He wheeled and sprinted away, into the teeth of the Starwind.
---
The blast of wind struck at Keill like a furious, gigantic beast – a beast that deafened him with its roaring as it tried to hurl him off his feet Half-blinded by the dust, he stumbled away from the doorway, angling sideways so that he soon came to the smooth metal wall of the tower. He glanced back – but if the clones had followed him into the storm, they were not visible in the rage of dust and wind.
One arm flung across his face, Keill pushed forward, hugging the tower wall. There the wind eddied and gusted, twisting back upon itself as the expanse of smooth metal blocked its forward sweep.
And like a deeper bass note beneath the howl of the wind, Keill could hear the tower creak and groan under the assault.
Altern had relied too much on his force field, not conceiving of the possibility that someone might shut it off. So there was no failsafe – and the tower would crumble and be swept away, before this day was over, just as the first human structures on Rilyn had been swept away so long before. The only question was whether Altern would escape the tower's fall.
Or, Keill thought, if anyone would – including himself. The wind's force seemed to have grown even in the short time he had been outside. Worriedly he shaped a questioning call in his mind.
There was no reply.
Of course he could not speak to Glr unless she reached with her mind into his. And she would be concentrating more on survival, as her membranous wings did battle with the Starwind. That's why she doesn't reply, he told himself. That has to be why...
At his shoulder the tower wall suddenly ended in a sharp corner. He had come to one of the vertical grooves that ran up the full height of the wall. It was about a metre and a half wide and about a metre deep, probably providing extra support for the high sweep of metal. But this groove, he found, also had another function.
There was a flat, oblong platform of thick metal, fitting neatly within the groove at the height of Keill's chest. Beneath it was a metal casing that seemed to contain the machinery of some kind of energising magnetism.
For whatever reason – to carry cargo down from the spaceship, or for maintenance on the outer wall – the tower had offered another way it could be ascended.
An external elevator.
Through choking flurries of dust he located the controls, on the wall beneath the platform. He slammed his hand against the activating stud, then vaulted on to the platform as it began to rise, without haste, along the vertical groove.
Grouched at its edge, Keill looked down, gripping the platform as the wind tried to drag him from his perch. By the time he had risen to the first level, he could no longer clearly see the ground, in the sweep of windborne dust. Equally he would not be visible to searching clones – and perhaps none of them would think of the external elevator.
So Keill fed his hope as the elevator carried him up the tower, which was groaning ever more painfully as the Star-wind's violence swelled.
And then hope faltered. The elevator platform shuddered, slowed and came to a halt. There it rested, as if it had become welded to the metal sides of the groove.
Keill moved towards the edge, but jerked back as an energy beam sliced into the metal. The clones had found him – and he was neatly trapped, to be picked off at their leisure.
He snapped a quick shot downwards, not sure if he had hit anything, but knowing that the threat of his gun might hold them back briefly. Then he glanced round, his mind racing, while the Starwind howled like a thousand devils, gleeful at the prospect of victory.
Around him the tower seemed now to be vibrating slightly under the wind's onslaught. But Keill kept his balance, and leaned forward slightly to peer at the expanse of smooth metal wall on either side of the groove. There ought to be windows on every level of the tower, he knew, even if they were so polarised that they could not be distinguished from the metal, to an outside observer. Not even one as close as he was – not in that storm of blinding dust.
He slid his hand along the wall. Smooth metal, for half a metre – that would be the solid vertical supports at each side of the grooves. But then... the slight, almost undetectable line of a seam, under his fingers. The kind of seam that even Deathwing technology would have to leave, between the metal of the wall support and the polarised plastiglass of a window.
At once he swept his gun's blast of energy along the line where he thought the seam might be.
And instead of an eruption of molten metal, there was the splintering crash – almost inaudible in the wind – of collapsing glass. He had an entrance, back into the tower.
He accepted the offer without hesitation. Though the devil-voice of the Starwind shrieked in anticipation, he tucked the gun away and leaned out into the full force of the blast, reaching with one hand to clutch the lower edge of the window-frame, where the plastiglass had fallen away. Then he swung out – dangling for a breathless instant with only the strength of one hand, and the strength of sheer determined will, keeping him from being plucked away like a leaf from a tree by the raging wind.
But his other hand at once reached up and found its hold, and then he was raising himself with acrobatic smoothness, up and over the edge of the window.
In the room, he did fractionally hesitate – with astonishment. Luck, or fate, had stopped the elevator beside the window of the room where he had been interrogated – the control centre of Altern.
But there was no one inside. Only the array of complex equipment that Keill had noted before, along with a cloud of hurtling sheets of paper and plastic, swept from the broad table by the wind that stormed in, a beast robbed of its prey, through the shattered window.
Keill moved towards the door, then paused. He wanted to hurry to the roof of the tower, in case Altern was seeking to escape on the spacecraft. But he also knew that the ranged rows of technology might hold some information, some clue or hint, that could reveal the whereabouts of the Deathwing leader, The One – or even the Warlord himself.
With feverish speed, he moved to the banks of equipment, scanning the computer and data storage consoles, fingers stabbing at their keys. Display screens flashed up data, but it was disjointed, meaningless. He needed time to make sense of it – time he did not have.
Yet he worked on, forcing himself not to think of how the tower would be shuddering and creaking under the Starwi
nd's relentless assault. And especially not to think of how Glr, too, would be running out of time, as the ravaging wind grew more terrible every moment.
His eyes blurred as the wind hurled dust like needles through the air. Even the computer's clatter was nearly drowned by the mad howling of the wind. So it was not a sound that alerted him. It was some instinct, bred of his unbelievably tuned awareness, that gave his reflexes their warning. It gave him just a microsecond to begin to whirl and crouch.
But that was not quite enough to take him clear of the savage, clubbing blow to the side of his head – from a giant, golden fist.
The glancing blow flung Keill off his feet, slamming him into the row of computers. He sagged to the floor, battling to retain consciousness, as Altern reached down to pluck the beam-gun from his belt and fling it out of sight across the room.
The puffy face, contorted and even more mottled with fury, drew close.
'I am going to kill you, Randor – painfully and slowly. You have destroyed a key element in the Master's plan. You are of no further use to me.'
'The One won't be pleased with you,' Keill said, trying to gain time while his head cleared from the effects of the blow.
The thick lips twisted scornfully. 'You are a fool. Do you think the Master would entrust this operation to any agent? Here I have used a name, for convenience – but among the Deathwing I have another name, that is no name.' The eerie voice seemed to slice effortlessly through the rage of the wind.
'Randor – I am The One!'
CHAPTER TWELVE
The words that Keill could scarcely believe he had heard seemed to whirl round the room, as a huge gust of wind, slicing in through the window, echoed and amplified them Into a demonic howl.
Altern... The One. The great golden cyborg was not merely another powerful agent of the Warlord, He was the mysterious head of the Deathwing himself – the Warlord's principal aide.
For a blinding second Keill's mind reeled at the thought of what he might have done with that information, if he were not trapped and disarmed within a tower that would soon be like flimsy paper in the swelling might of the wind.
But in the same instant he recovered his control. If the words of The One had been intended to freeze him with shock and terror, they failed. Instead, they galvanised him. The effects of The One's attack were swept away, as adrenaline surged through his body, fuelling his battle readiness.
And just in time, for the golden giant was carrying out his threat to kill him.
The One's huge metal foot stamped down crushingly towards Keill's groin. But Keill wrenched his body aside in a twisting roll – and rolled again as The One struck out a second time in a sweeping kick. It missed Keill by centimetres, slashing past him to crumple the front of a computer as if it were made of cloth.
As it did so Keill came to his feet, backing away swiftly, ducking under another clubbing swing of a great golden fist. Before the giant could strike again, Keill had lashed a kick of his own, hammering his boot with concentrated power into the golden metal midriff.
At once he was spinning away, out of teach, and his mind too was spinning. Such a kick would have crushed bone, splintered wood, at least dented heavy sheet metal. And Keill had expected that the complex mechanisms of the cyborg's body would not withstand that kind of impact.
But though The One had been briefly jolted, the unique golden metal of his torso showed not the slightest mark or blemish. And he was advancing as menacingly as before.
Keill backed away, poised and watchful. The One seemed to have no special combat skills – but clearly he did not need them, with that metal body to protect him. Of course the puffy grey face was mere flesh. The One carried his great hands high, as if aware that his face must be guarded. But even so...
Keill sensed the presence of the broad metal table behind him, and without warning dived towards it, with a half-turn, his hand slapping on to its surface as if he intended to vault over it. But instead he swung his body round in a full circle, on the rigid pivot of his arm, driving both feet together like a battering ram at The One's head.
The giant staggered back, but he had flung up his huge hands in time against the blow, and the inhuman strength of those hands blocked and absorbed its force. At once Keill found his balance, and this time did dive smoothly across the table, regaining his feet to face The One across the breadth of metal.
But the giant simply took hold of the table and lifted it -nearly half a ton of metal, lifted as an ordinary man might pick up a light board. Then he flung the massive weight of it at Keill.
Instantly Keill dropped to the floor, and the table sailed over him, plunging with a shattering burst of fragments through what was left of the window. The Starwind burst through the enlarged opening with even greater power, howling its fury. And even The One was halted, driven backwards a stumbling step or two, by the awesome blast.
Keill came swiftly to his feet, pressing the advantage. He closed on the giant, feinting with stabbing fingers towards the race, then dropping away to drive a lightning kick against the knee, hoping that the need for flexibility at the joints might have reduced the strength of the metal seams.
But his guess was wrong. The huge leg barely moved under the Impact. And this time The One was quick enough to deliver a counterblow of his own, kicking savagely at Keill as he twisted away.
The kick glanced off his ribs, and he felt his tunic rip, felt the blaze of pain from tormented flesh, and knew that any bones but his would have been snapped by that kick. As he came to his feet again, fighting for balance and vision in the dust-laden storm of wind, he wondered if he could use the secret of his bones to his advantage – as he had done before, in hand-to-hand combat with Deathwing agents. But to do so he would have to give The One an opening – and there were too many parts of his body that were not unbreakable, if they came into those inhuman golden hands.
Much better, he thought as the giant lunged towards him, to find the beam-gun that had been flung so arrogantly aside.
He slid under The One's reaching hand and sliced up at the face with a lethal chop. But the other giant hand was there to block, clamping on to Keill's wrist and wrenching it with ferocious strength. For an instant they were almost face to face – close enough for Keill to see the look of surprise in the tiny eyes as Keill used the impetus of the wrenching twist to complete a forward half-roll that gave him leverage enough to drag his wrist free from the terrible grasp.
We could go on like this for ever, he thought, backing away. But the tower isn't going to be standing much longer. Where is that gun?
Even as he completed the thought, he saw it. Just a glimpse of it, lying neat the far wall, almost invisible in the driving torment of the dust. But The One was standing in the way.
Cautiously Keill began to circle, edging nearer to his goal. The golden giant seemed unaware of Keill's purpose, single-mindedly, fanatically intent on savage murder. He lunged forward again, but Keill dodged and slid away, a step or two closer. Again the giant stepped near, huge fist lashing out. And as Keill surged aside he saw an opening, and struck fiercely upwards with his own fist.
It took The One just at the junction of the golden hood and the grey flesh of the face – and though Keill's fist had travelled less than half a metre, it was delivered with a focused balanced power that had Keill's entire weight behind it.
The giant staggered back and half-fell, the blubbery lips opening in an inaudible cry. And Keill turned and dived towards the place where he had seen the gun.
But it was no longer there.
A sheaf of plastic computer printouts had scudded across the floor before being snatched up and flattened against the wall by the wind. And it had slid into the gun, sweeping it away.
Keill stared around frantically, and saw it again, only a few strides away, against the wall. But The One had regained his balance and was plunging towards him, fingers curved to grasp like great golden claws, dark blood oozing from the side of the puffy face.
Poising himself, Keill waited for half a second's space, then moved forward – straight into the giant's grasp.
His hands flicked up, thrusting the clutching hands aside, and in the same motion gripping the huge wrists. Then Keill flung himself backwards, back and down to the floor. The momentum of The One and Keill's grip on his wrists brought the golden body hurtling forward. And Keill swung his legs up, his boots taking the giant in the middle of his torso and lifting him up and over in a smooth, curving arc –
towards the gaping space that had been the window.
If The One had been only a few kilograms lighter, he might have hurtled out through that gap into the raging grip of the Starwind. But even Keill had barely managed the throw, despite his finely judged leverage and timing, with the awesome weight of that metal body. And The One crashed against the wall just below the empty window frame, with an echoing metallic thunder that not even the wind's bestial roar could completely drown.
At once The One was clambering to his feet. The golden body seemed twisted slightly, one leg slightly askew, as if the impact of the fall had dislodged some of the cybernetic circuits within. But there was no doubt that he was still functioning well enough to continue the murderous combat.
Except that as he began his charge, an irresistible, blasting gust of wind burst through the window. It swept Keill off his feet, for all his uncanny balance, sprawling him full length on the floor. And it staggered the great bulk of The One, so that he too lurched away to one side, slamming against the same wall.
With all his prodigious metallic power he fought to recover, to resume the attack. But then it was too late.
That wild gust of wind had hurled Keill directly on top of the beam-gun that he had been seeking.
And he simply snatched it up and blasted a fist-sized molten hole through the precise centre of The One's golden torso.
---
For a moment Keill waited – but there was no sign of movement or life in the fallen metal body. At last he thrust the gun into his belt and moved to the door, dragging it open a crack against the huge pressure of the wind, and peered out. There was another, smaller room beyond, which seemed deserted.