Ringships

by Peter Claisse

  They went on, climbing when they could, carrying the injured until eventually they found some large boulders and took cover behind them. The firing stopped, and an uneasy silence hung over the valley. They were now high enough to see right across the low hills opposite and could even make out the outline of the mine at the source beyond them. Suddenly they saw a shuttle approaching. It flew low over the hills and stopped above the river. Lynella drove her power into it but nothing happened.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Angus asked. ‘Quick, get down.’

  The missile exploded against the boulder and large parts of it were blasted away. Rock fragments flew across the hillside.

  ‘It’s not Lynella’s fault.’ Paul shouted ‘It’s the shuttle, they’ve given it protection. Lynella’s power can’t touch it.’ In a futile gesture he stood up and fired his rifle at it.

  The second missile shot away most of the rest of the boulder. Rifle shots rang out from the far side of the river, pinning them down as the shuttle took aim again. Paul saw that Lynella was kneeling up with the jewel on her forehead shining so brightly that the light was even reflecting off the hull of the shuttle.

  ‘You can’t do anything’ he shouted, ‘get down’

  The shuttle was about to fire when the surface of the river below it erupted throwing out enormous waves in all directions. The next moment he saw the tail of the shuttle thrown upwards. The missile flew off harmlessly down the valley. The shuttle lurched back and forth and lost height. In its place the iron ring from the base of the ship hung motionless. Without thinking he put his jewel to his forehead and helped drive it on upwards.

  One part of him saw the shuttle crash into the river but on another plane, he was seeing images of more shuttles coming and only one way to stop them. He was being probed for information. She wanted details from plans he had drawn up long before. Lynella had a detailed mental image of the field above the source and he was mapping locations onto it. The ring flew slowly over the hills. The men in the Jeeps stared up in disbelief but it flew on. It flew out across the plane and, with awful precision, crashed into the hydrogen separation plant.

  Paul was totally drained of energy. He was barely conscious of hearing the explosion in the distance and then counting. He knew that he should count to five, five seconds for the heat from the blast at the separation plant to penetrate the super-cooled liquid in the storage tanks. The second explosion was so loud it seemed to shake the stones around him even at a distance of forty miles. He felt ashamed of himself, he had designed the tank farm and his colleagues had built it. Some of them would have died. Then he felt strangely pleased. He had positioned the farm far enough away from the mother ship that this explosion would not have breached the hull. The director had poured scorn on him for wasting resources by designing it so far away. The damage would be enough to ground the shuttles for some time but no more than that. The plant would be re-built and then the ship could still take off and go. He realised that he had planned the attack sub-consciously long before. He wondered how long ago Lynella had found out about it through the linking of their minds. He was barely aware of his body being carried up the slope and away from the shattered boulder which now offered virtually no remaining cover.

  Across the river, the survivors who had been pinned down near the river bank shouted out in defiance and charged up the slope behind them. The soldiers around the bulldozer seemed to have been mesmerised by the explosions and were taken completely by surprise. Even with only three working guns between them the attackers quickly overcame them, hitting them with sticks and stones and wrestling their guns from them before they had a chance to fire.

  Adam and Angus watched them moving about on the hill-top, tying up their captives and searching the Jeeps for supplies. Then, looking slightly downstream, they saw a vast army of dragons moving forward, concealed by the shape of the hills at the bend in the river. Adam took careful aim and shot one of the dragons. Risking fire from any of the director’s men still loose on the far bank he then stood out from the cover of the boulder and waved his arms, shouting and pointing as clearly as he could at the dragons. On the far bank they took cover when they heard the shot and then looked on in bemusement at his signalling. Eventually he gave up.

  ‘I hope they have a lot of ammunition.’ He said. ‘There’s a whole army of dragons.’

  ‘They’ll need more than that.’ Angus replied. ‘Look at the tower.’

  The port had opened again. It was well out of range of the rifles so there was nothing at all that they could do. The people opposite had found medical supplies and were all concentrating on treating their many wounded. Angus moved his party around the enormous boulder that they were sheltering behind to give them cover just in case they were the target, but they knew what would happen. The dragons started their charge. Just as the men heard the dragons the cone of blinding blue fire flashed out and the fuel tanks on the vehicles exploded even as those around them were falling to the ground. Exactly on cue the dragons reached the open ground and they charged up the slope with scarcely a shot fired.

  Angus watched in helpless silence until the battle was over. ‘The people in the tower can command the dragons perfectly.’ He said. ‘And they didn’t hesitate to kill some of the Director’s men.’.

  ‘They’ll know where we are.’ Adam replied. ‘We must move far away, as fast as possible.’

  All through the evening and the night they struggled up the slope into the mountains. They tried to move South as well as East so that they would get a clear view across the tower to the source. Seeing their comrades killed left them completely demoralised, despite the defeat of the shuttle and the explosions at the source. Now they were fleeing for their lives from an enemy that could just as easily be in front of them as behind. Paul was semi-conscious and staggered on with the help of another man. Lynella was still completely unconscious so Angus carried her. The loose stone on the slope made any movement difficult but they managed to keep moving slowly onward. At first light they saw that they were in a barren landscape of loose scree with rocky outcrops. They had a clear view of the ground for a good distance below them and Angus judged it safe to stop and rest. The tower was now almost directly below them, commanding the only route through from the river valley to the source. Beyond it they could see the clear outline of Atlanta in the distance and could even make out the scar on the landscape where the hydrogen plant had been.

  The dragons seemed to be moving gradually towards the tower, spreading out along the river bank as they went. Some of them crossed the river, swimming easily across using their powerful tails to drive them forwards. They gathered opposite the tower but showed no sign of climbing up the slope. Angus could not tell if they simply did not know where he was or if they just knew that he would have to come down when his food ran out. Adam managed to trap a couple of birds and even found some wood for a fire to cook them, but they had little meat on them to share round. Eventually after another full day of waiting Lynella started to regain consciousness.

  When she awoke she wanted to know everything about what had happened. She kept asking questions. She asked Paul why she had been unable to use her power on the shuttle and was not satisfied until he had described exactly what an atomic bomb was, why they gave off electromagnetic pulses, and why the shuttles had been designed so they could be hardened against them and used to support a nuclear attack. Finally, she made him try to work out whether it would have been possible to harden the tower against them. He could see no way it could have been done in a way which could not be seen.

  Lynella stood up to get a clear view of the valley below. Angus was about to warn her about possible snipers remaining in the forest opposite but something about her look made him hesitate. She had assumed the leadership of the group in a way he had not seen before. He glanced at Paul and saw that he was also looking anxiously out from the cover of the boulder. To their horror a single shot rang out and Lynella’s body jerked backwards. Maria rushed forwards but before s
he had moved more than a single pace Paul held his hand out to stop her. Lynella’s jewel had flashed. Two flashes in as many seconds. Now a scream rang out, not from her but echoing up the valley from below. It was short, the lone soldier’s cry was cut short. The first flash had stopped his bullet and the second had made his gun explode in his hands. Paul remembered having calculated that the ceramic bullets would be inaccurate at long range. He had discussed it with the men in the workshop on the ship where they were made. This explained why the sniper had not used them, but once again he could only conclude that this was another part of his plan of attack that Lynella had found out from him without waiting for him to tell her.

  The valley fell silent. Lynella stood motionless, only the steady rhythm of the changing glow in her jewel showed that she was still concentrating on the scene below her. Paul merged almost imperceptibly into the field of her power and found that she was probing the tower below them. With all of the ports closed she had no way of getting past the outer metal walls but she worked carefully across the entire surface. Those inside could be in no doubt about the challenge that she offered. No response came.

  Lynella walked slowly and deliberately out in front of the boulder and beaconed to Maria to come to her side. With great care she started to walk down the slope. Maria watched out for a safe path and had to guide her because she never let her concentration on the tower lapse for an instant. Gradually the rest of the party realised that they would have to follow. Paul was quickly ushered to the front to walk next to Lynella. Angus moved up to help him because he also kept his eyes fixed on the tower.

  The dragons at the bottom of the slope fell quietly into a single line, drawn up along the bank of the river. There were over a hundred of them, all facing directly at the small party of humans moving very slowly towards them. Even though he was using his jewel Paul still sensed that they were sending a message. It had no words, it took the form of an aura that hung over the base of the valley, an aura of destruction and doom. To the very edge, towards the route back down the river to the sea there was an impression of peace but directly below them lay nothing but blackness.

  They moved so slowly that an hour later they were still looking down at the tower. They all knew that the trial of strength would take place when they came below the level of the ports at the top of it. They walked in complete silence, each one engrossed in their own thoughts. The dragons below them were ready to charge. If they saw any sign of victory for their masters, they would finish off survivors in minutes.

  Paul kept his power merged with Lynella’s. He knew that by this time the enemy in the tower would have had the chance to study the power radiating from their jewels. They would not see what they expected, the jewels that they faced could deliver destruction with an intensity not seen on this planet for hundreds of years. They would know this, there were many of them and they had the machinery to help them, but they would be worried.

  They came level with the top of the tower. They were close enough to see the enormous unblinking eyes of the dragons staring at them. They could even hear the rippling water of the river as it flowed behind them. Soon they stopped, close enough to smell the sulphurous breath of the dragons blown towards them on the gentle breeze but not too close to stop them seeing in through they high ports on the tower when they opened. Forming into a group they stood motionless, ignoring the heat of the mid-day sun.

  Lynella’s jewel had kept up the steady pulsing all the way down the slope but now it suddenly stopped.

  Paul reached out to her with his mind, expecting to sense her resolve and know what plans she was forming. He found confusion.

  ‘It’s all a pretence. A bluff. I can’t possibly stop the beam. I couldn’t even light a globe.’ Her thoughts came through as a complete jumble. She was trying to see her way through the turmoil and find the thread to her power. Her mind was full of images of having betrayed her friends, of leading them out into danger with no hope of protecting them. She was Lynella, the ordinary person who had once been able to use her power but that was all over. He tried to tell her that it was her choice. She wasn’t listening.

  He concentrated on his own jewel, making it pulse brightly, even projecting a taunt at the tower. But they had seen the weakness, the port was opening, sliding silently back to reveal the mechanism inside. He was so close he could see the individual rings and wires as the blue glow built up within them. In a fraction of a second the energy grew, and he drew on every reserve of his own, his jewel flashed, and the glow faltered. But it did not stop, and the beam drove out causing an explosion of pain as it drove all his energy and much more back into the jewel. In that instant of time before he lost consciousness he was aware of something of terrible strength that came from Lynella. It was not just a flash. It was an explosion, it was an outpouring of hatred and anger focussed through the jewel to a searing intensity. Only the bulk of the tower protected the machines at the source. The beam was driven back with such ferocity that the entire mechanism was destroyed together with the structure around it leaving nothing more than a smouldering ruin.

  Lynella could not stop. Just as they turned to flee she killed dragons, pouring out indiscriminate destruction. The remains of a bulldozer on the hill opposite exploded. Even her friends felt one final wave of terror as she started to turn before she collapsed into Maria’s arms.

  27

  The steward looked out of the window of his house. Calling it a house was actually a generous description because it was just a couple of rooms in the end of one of the temporary accommodation blocks at the encampment. It had been raining and the rain was running down the partition wall. The roof should have been sealed where the next unit joined onto the one he was in, but nobody had bothered to do it when the structure had been set up. The water gathered in pools on the floor and was slowly working its way across to his feet. He thought about the castle with and his warm dry study now lying half ruined, blocked off and deserted, but despite all this he was happy. He had just heard the explosion. It would have been difficult to miss. His window had rattled violently and almost blown in on him and the flash had lit up the whole valley and even seemed to make the low grey clouds glow white for an instant. What he could have missed, but was very glad he had not, was the ring. Just for an instant before the crash he was sure he had seen it in the distance and it gave him great reassurance. It was a clear signal that Lynella and her friends were coming back. He had been too old to go with her, but he had been sure she would return and now she was coming and this hell on earth that was a mining camp would soon come to an end.

  Soon the miners started to reappear from the shaft. He was too old for manual work, so he had been condemned just to watch. Each day the remnants of the four proud kingdoms became less. Less in number as they were killed by endless accidents but also less in spirit as they lost their identity, forgot about their homes and gave up hope. For him the worst tragedy was the way that his planet had been subdued entirely by its own internal conflicts. The monks, Lynella, and Christian and his village had all had the power to stop the intruders, but they had been too busy fighting each other. It was the story of the last battles of the mages all over again but worse.

  Today, however, it was different. They had heard the explosion and he soon told them about the ring. There was better news to come. The guards were careless and casual and quite convinced that the local people would never understand anything technical. They were openly discussing the fact that the fuel supply for the shuttles had been destroyed and even better than that they were worried. They knew that the ring could have hit the mother ship, their only way of getting home. They were nervous, always looking out at the horizon where the ring had come from and talking on their little communicators to try to get some reassuring news. But no news came.

  They took their revenge by making the evening meal even worse than normal. There were scraps of meat from some indistinguishable animal and buckets of fruit that the women had been permitted to gather from native
plants in the forest. For the steward and the other former royals this was almost impossible to eat. He saw Henry looking weak and sick. Since he had been unceremoniously rounded up after the loss of the second shuttle he had slowly lost weight and his thin shirt now seemed to hang off the bones of his shoulders. The news that Lynella was likely to arrive and rescue them did nothing to raise his spirits.

  The next day was an anti-climax. After all the excitement the men still had to go down the mine and when the re-emerged nothing had happened. The guards had a reassuring message from the Director that ‘everything was under control’ and marched about with renewed confidence. One more day and the next signal came.

  The camp was close to the centre of the source and the top of the tower was normally just visible through the gap in the hills. They heard a second explosion that was far more distant than the first but carried no shock wave. The guards’ communicators stopped working which alarmed them. It seemed that the even satellites that carried their messages had been damaged by the great blast. Then one of the men noticed that the top of the tower had gone. They all climbed on the roofs to look. Normally the guards would have stopped this, but they were too distracted to bother. Somebody suggested that the trees might have grown up to hide it but, although nobody could remember checking that it had still been there for several months past, it was obvious to the steward that it had just gone.

  He was tempted to open his last bottle of whisky. He remembered being given the bottles by the Mission Director as a bribe to make him accept the new order. The days of bribes were long gone and just one last bottle remained. He didn’t open it, he felt he ought to keep it. Maria had told him how the tower had been built with thick solid metal walls. There was no way Lynella could have destroyed it with the power she had when she left. He was going to need the whisky later when he found out what was happening. He had just made this decision when there was a sharp knock at the door and a guard entered.