Sword Destiny (18 page)

“The escape ships,” Zela said helplessly. “Did they launch?”

“We launched five escape ships, all filled with our children. It started the war. The orbital battle stations shot all of them down. They may have thought it was part of a preemptive strike on our part, or perhaps they were just determined that no one should escape.”

“Jayna,” Kananda said in horror. He could not grasp the pain of thousands of unknown babes and children. He could only reduce it down to the one woman he had known, Jayna who had been their faithful travelling companion and who had so bravely helped them to survive on Ghedda.

“Jayna and her daughter were on the first ship,” Laton answered bitterly. “We kept our promise to her.”

His image broke up again. Either the distance was too great or the transmitting signal too weak. Zela's face contorted and a tear trickled down her cheek. Kyle had now come to join them, but had nothing to offer. Laton's face re-formed again, his features wobbling like a reflection in water. The sound signal buzzed with static.

“Our weapons,” Zela said at last. “Have we launched?”

“No.” Laton's voice was terse inside the blanket of crackle. “Our weapons have always been regarded as a deterrent with a destructive potential far too terrible for them ever to be used. Even now, when we on Alpha face certain annihilation, some have argued that the planet might survive if our missiles stay in their silos. They hope that the silo-defence systems can knock out the Gheddan missiles before they strike. But it is a vain hope. Only a few of the first wave will be stopped. Most of the Gheddan missiles must get through. That means our weapons and theirs will detonate all along the volcanic fault line.”

“Then launch our weapons, even if it is only to send them out into space.”

“The trajectories could not now be reconfigured in time.” Laton tore at his straying hair in despair. “I argued for that, but I was in the minority vote. Antar and the others thought that to be seen throwing our weapons away would only invite the Gheddan attack. They felt that keeping our deterrent would be our only hope of salvation, even though we had decided that we could never use it. Perhaps the Sword Lords of Ghedda were able to anticipate this. They may have assessed our minds correctly and acted on the assumption that in the final choice, we would not defend ourselves. However, it is all academic. I calculate that the Gheddan missiles alone will be enough to split open our planet.”

“I cannot believe this,” Zela cried out in anguish. “All the history of Alpha, all our philosophy and all our golden achievements. All for nothing? Where is our One God in all of this? Where is all that you have taught me?”

“We are not the only world in this universe.” Laton's voice was faltering, but still he spoke with conviction. “You have seen two inhabited worlds in this solar system alone. The One God behind All Gods will always be there. The essential balance of divine purpose will always be maintained. Dooma will cease to exist, but we know that our spiritual selves must pass through many life experiences. We look for justice in the divine purpose and so we know that there can be no alternative to spiritual rebirth, for all too often we cannot find justice in the individual life span. Neither can we see it in the death of our homeworld. If justice is essential to the divine purpose, then it must be universal, woven through many lives and perhaps many worlds.”

“Father, you are not giving a lecture now,” Zela almost screamed at him. “You are not on your rostrum at the Academy. The City of Singing Spires is gone—and you are going to die.”

“Daughter, do not grieve for me,” Laton pleaded. “Even though Dooma will be destroyed, the essence of all our souls will be reborn again—perhaps on the third planet where you have discovered life, or even in another solar system. And the black souls of the Gheddans will also be reborn, so the conflict of good and evil will always continue, as it always must.”

“Father, you are a philosopher to the last. But all philosophy is empty now. All that we have ever been, all that we could ever hope to be, it is finished.”

“No, Zela, this is not so. We have learned a terrible lesson. We have learned the folly of an arms race with such monstrous, suicidal weapons. Even as a deterrent, their creation was evil, for once they were created there was no way to prevent them from falling into evil hands. The Gheddans are destroying Alpha and themselves with improved copies of Alphan weapons, created initially by Alphan scientists. With the best of intentions, we have sown the seeds of our own destruction. This must not happen again. You still live. Some of us must be reborn with old racial memories. Perhaps that is the point of all this, to make sure that it does not happen again. Earth must not follow the example of Dooma.”

“Father, it will be another two or three thousand years before Earth can even hope to reach the heights of Alpha. They have only just discovered the wheel. They think our spaceships are steel temples.”

“But they will develop. There must come a time.” Laton looked to one side, perhaps to a timing mechanism where the hours and the minutes were measured. “Three minutes have passed,” he cried fearfully. “Dooma is finished. The arms of the Gheddans are upon us.” The screens showing his tortured face went white and then blanked out.

Zela flicked desperately at the switches in front of her, but the image of her father's face had gone forever. Sobbing, she turned her attention to the main engine controls, forcing the ship into motion until there was enough momentum to turn the bows and face the outer rim of the solar system where her homeworld was a bright star in near space. Raven and his Solar Cruiser were forgotten now as she lowered the shields over the forward windows for one last glimpse of the fifth planet.

Two hundred million miles away, suspended halfway between the red planet and the first gas giant, Dooma twinkled with reassuring normality. All three of them stared at it, willing the planet to remain that way. But slowly, and then with terrifying speed, the twinkle of bright light expanded.

Dooma disintegrated into a searing burst of white light that illuminated the universe. The red heart at the core of the planet burst asunder as the chain reaction of nuclear explosions ripped along the volcanic fault lines of Alpha, shattering the thin, iron-jacketed planetary crust. Then it took only moments for the racing pattern of earthquakes and fissures to spread across the seabed to Ghedda. More mountain ranges collapsed and the draining seas boiled and vaporized as the molten fragments of core-stuff spewed out into the solar system. The air in the planet's atmosphere burst into hellish blankets of flame. Two of her three moons were thrown together in violent collision and then all of them vanished in the blinding light that radiated outward, blotting out the distant star systems and galaxies.

Zela, Kyle and Kananda all screamed with pain, clutching at their eyes with both hands. Behind them, Laurya's physical body arched wildly on her bunk as she shrieked with an even greater agony as the death cries of so many souls, on both the physical and the astral planes, lanced deep into her subconscious mind.

In a matter of moments, the fifth planet had ceased to exist. An inhabited world of blue skies and seas, rivers and plains and a life-giving atmospheric envelope where birds could fly and rain once fell had simply gone. In its place was a radiating mass of fragments and radioactive rubble, slowly spreading to form an asteroid belt that would remain forever as an orbiting warning between the red planet of Mars and the first gas giant that was Jupiter. Except for the asteroid belt, only the name of the fifth planet survived, in the shortened version of the word Doom, which was for later generations to mean the Day of Judgement and cataclysmic destruction.

As the white radiance of death filled the heavens, the last words of the philosopher Laton seemed to echo among the reeling stars. They were also words that would filter down through the later centuries of Earth time and racial memory with apocalyptic portent.

“The arms of the Gheddans are upon us.”

 

The arms of the Gheddans.

 

Armageddon

 

Armageddon

 

Armageddon

Chapter Nine

Sardar the Merciless watched patiently from his chariot as the weary forces of Karakhor filed slowly out of the battered gates of their city to assemble for one last time in their battle ranks upon the plain. Kamar and Nazik, Tuluq and Bharat had all reined in their chariots on either side of him and they too waited calmly with silent smiles of satisfaction playing around their lips. The horde behind them could hardly restrain themselves, but their captains and chieftains held them back for Sardar's signal. All of Maghalla could understand what was happening. This was to be the last day, the last stand of dying Karakhor. By nightfall the long siege-war would be over. They would be triumphant. The men of Karakhor would be dead upon the plain. The city, its golden riches and the soft, ripe women would be theirs.

Only one thought shadowed Sardar's mind, and from time to time he glanced up above the walls to where the black steel nose of the Gheddan Solar Cruiser now rose sharply among the cluster of temple spires. They had all watched the spaceship descend and now it was an ominous, silent threat which none of them could comprehend. As the night shadows fled and the sun began to edge up over the eastern sky, its first rays struck a gleaming shine from the crumpled steel. The bright flash caused Sardar to lick his suddenly dry lips. He did not know what this might portend.

At last the Karakhoran chariots appeared, led by the banners of Jahan and Devan, the familiar snarling tiger and the lion's paw. They rode through a broad avenue left between the ranks of men and took up their places in front of the field. Behind them came the chariots and banners of the young lords and princes of the city. Then five more chariots, each with a Hindu driver and an alien passenger. The five blue men in the strange uniforms of white and gold, the blue gods from the sky, were standing with Karakhor. For the first time, a flicker of doubt and uncertainty passed through the ranks of Maghalla.

 

 

 

Jahan almost wept with pride as he rode slowly through the pitifully thin ranks of his remaining forces. Most of them wore bloody rags or were garbed in sword or spear-slashed leather. They carried buckled shields and battered helmets. Half of them had not eaten for several days. Their ranks were sprinkled with old greyheads and white-faced boys, with the sick and the lame. His own leg ached abominably. He wished that he could lead them to the victory they so richly deserved, but all that he could offer them now was a heroic death. Even so they were here to make a last stand for Karakhor, facing a host that was still double their own numbers, and for that the old Warmaster General loved them all.

He took his place in the centre of the front line. Devan lined up his chariot on Jahan's right, his face grim and terrible as he contemplated the enemy, the naked blade of his great sword swinging loose and ready in his right hand. Beyond Devan, the younger princes and house lords took their places. To Jahan's left, the Gheddans wheeled into place. Between Jahan and Raven was the one chariot the Warmaster had argued against. Its driver was Maryam, standing slim and tense beside her blue god. She wore the leather trousers, boots and lace-up jerkin of a Gheddan woman, which she had retrieved from the spaceship. In her hand she now carried the Gheddan sword she had won from the ambush on the forest road to Stronghold Raven. It was her talisman, her own symbol of her newfound status.

“I am of Raven's world now,” she had told Jahan and the others when they protested at her presence. “He is my husband and my place is at his side. We fight together.” Again she tactfully made no mention of the fact that no actual marriage ceremony had taken place. Her mother and her aunts would have demanded full details of such things, but fortunately her stern-faced uncles had other, more desperate matters on their minds. Raven had not learned her language as thoroughly as she had learned his, and made no comment. He either did not understand or did not care.

When they were all in place, there was a moment of silence, a heartbeat of stillness when even the breeze refrained from rustling the noble pennants and banners. It was as though both earth and sky and the gods themselves allowed them one last pause of deep respect. Then Jahan raised his ruby-hilted sword.

From the walls of Karakhor, the last challenge rang out, the conch shells and the trumpets and the war-beat of the drums. The sound was swamped and drowned by the answering blast and uproar from the ranks of Maghalla. Then Sardar chopped down his sword in signal and it began. Maghalla whooped and howled and the whole vast horde charged eagerly forward.

Jahan let them come and they were met with Gheddan lazer fire. Raven and his four companions used their side weapons with merciless effect, the white beams cutting scorching swathes through the Maghallan ranks. The charge was checked as men died screaming and others tried to turn back against the tide. On his left flank, the front was holding and Jahan and Devan led a wheeling counter-charge to their right, swinging their small column of chariots to meet the Maghallan attack and then wielding their swords with all the savagery they could muster.

Sardar had prudently held his war leaders back, letting the rank and file of his army fall upon the Karakhoran line. He watched through narrowed eyes, his lips pursed into a grotesque scowl as lesser men shriveled and died under the white-hot slashes of lazer fire. Some instinct told him that this could not last forever and so he waited.

Raven had shared out every spare power pack that they possessed and as each lazer beam inevitably faded, the new packs were slammed home and the killing resumed. But as Sardar had rightly guessed, they were limited. The tide was held, but one by one the last bursts of white fire expired and the Gheddans could only resort to their swords. The battle was joined and an arrow slammed home into Garl's left eye.