John Brosnan - The Sky Lords

“Speak in a whisper,” he told her, leaning his head close to hers. “Yes, that’s the Sky Tower. I only hope it doesn’t spark off any old memories in our friend Horado’s mind.”

“When do we leave?” Jan asked. The city already seemed a long way away and the thought of flying all that distance in one of the Japanese gliders made her stomach flutter queasily. And with every passing moment the city became more distant as the Lord Pangloth , having made a wide detour round it, now flew northwards towards the place known as the Armstrong Spaceport.

“When it gets completely dark,” whispered Milo.

“But how will we see where to go?” she asked worriedly.

“Didn’t I tell you? I can see perfectly well in the dark.”

She was past being surprised by anything about Milo. She simply nodded and said, “Yes, but I can’t.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be doing all the steering. You just follow my instructions and everything will be fine. Our only problem is that storm up there in the hills. Let’s just hope it’s moving in the other direction.”

“What about our other problem?” she asked, shifting her head slightly to indicate their solemn-faced escorts, who were pretending to be watching the city instead of them.

Milo glanced briefly at them and shrugged. “No problem. On the contrary, they’ll be of help to us. Well, one of them will be.” He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t pursue the matter. She knew that she would find out what he had in mind soon enough. Let him enjoy his little dramatic game in the meantime.

The city grew ever more distant and soon Jan had trouble in making out its towers during the intermittent flashes of lightning. What she could see clearly were the lights of the Lord Pangloth , which was following the Perfumed Breeze at a distance of about a mile. Her thoughts turned inevitably to Ceri—was she on the Lord Pangloth or was she still on the Perfumed Breeze ? Was she safe? What was happening to her at this very moment?

Asking herself these questions only aggravated her anxiety about Ceri, and Jan tried to put her out of her mind. She looked at Milo, who was again staring silently into space. This prompted another line of anxious self-questioning: what was she doing putting her life yet again in the hands of this strange creature whom she already knew couldn’t be trusted? The more she learned about Milo the more he mystified and disturbed her. And still she couldn’t tell how much of what he told her of the old days was the truth and how much was invention concocted for reasons of his own.

What he’d told her about the woman called Miranda, for example, was very difficult to accept: that she had literally been himself in female form, a clone grown from one of his cells that had been genetically engineered to alter the Y chromosome. In this way Milo had been able to marry himself. “A marriage made in a heavenly test tube,” he had said with bitter humour. Jan got the impression that the relationship with his clone had not turned out as he had intended, but despite her continued questioning he refused to tell her any more about Miranda. She remembered he’d told the warlord tersely that Miranda had died, and she wondered about the full circumstances surrounding the clone’s death.

“It’s time,” murmured Milo.

His words caught her by surprise. “What are …?” she began but Milo was already moving towards their two guards. He said something to them in their language. It sounded to Jan like a question. The two guards frowned and then glanced at each other as Milo continued to approach them. Then he blurred . …

The guards had no time to draw their swords. Jan saw one of them fly backwards. He bounced off the wall behind him and fell to his knees, blood pouring from his nose. Milo had hold of the other one by his head. He wrenched the man’s head round with frightening strength. The vertebrae in his neck made a ghastly sound as they were twisted apart. Jan looked away. When she turned back the guard was lying face-down on the deck and Milo was bending over the first man. He brought the edge of his hand down on the back of the man’s neck. The guard slumped forward and lay still. Milo undid the warrior’s weapons harness and tossed it, with the sheathed swords and knives, at Jan’s feet. Then he picked the dead man up, carried him to the railing and, without displaying the least effort, flung him into space. The darkness swiftly swallowed up the man’s falling corpse. Milo went to the other body and began to strip it.

Everything had happened so fast that Jan felt disorientated. One moment there had been two living, breathing human beings with them on the small deck and now, within the blink, it seemed, of an eye, they were both dead; and one of them was plunging through the night air towards the ground. …

Milo was putting on the dead warrior’s clothes and armour. He looked at Jan and said, “Pick up those weapons. You’re going to need them.” She did as she was told. He put on the man’s helmet and grinned unpleasantly at her. “How do I look?”

“Everything’s too small on you. You won’t fool anyone … not for long, anyway,” she told him.

“I didn’t expect to get there and back completely unnoticed,” he said unperturbed. “Especially carrying a glider along the corridor. But the disguise will give me a slight edge and that’s all I need. See you soon…. ” He picked up the near-naked body and tossed it over the railing as effortlessly as the first one, then hurried down the deck and disappeared through the hatchway.

Jan sighed, then turned and leaned on the railing, trying to conceal the weapons with her body in case one of the Japanese should venture out on to the deck while Milo was gone. Underneath her jacket was a water bottle and a bag containing a number of rice cakes. She knew that the next ten minutes or so were going to be very long ones. Milo had estimated that was the amount of time it would take him to reach the nearest of the glider storage areas, steal one and get back to the deck. She wondered what she would do if he never returned. Use one of the knives on herself? Jump? Anything would be better than to fall into the hands of the warlord, who would undoubtedly be furious at being betrayed by Milo.

As expected, the time passed with agonizing slowness. Her palms began to sweat and the slightest sound made her start. Where was Milo? Surely more than ten minutes had passed by now. …

She gave another start. The sound of someone coming. At a run. Milo emerged through the hatchway. Under one arm he was carrying a folded-up glider, in his other hand he was holding a sword. Jan’s first thought was that the glider looked too ridiculously small to be capable of supporting two people, then she noticed the blood on the blade of the sword.

Milo’s eyes held the wild look she had seen before. He grinned crazily and said, “Bit more difficult that I expected. Left something of a mess back there but the survivors have probably sorted themselves out by now and are hot on my trail. We don’t have much time.” He sheathed his sword and began to unfold the glider. To Jan it seemed magical the way the thing just grew and grew—sections of tubular metal expanded to four times their original length; the silken cloth of the wing itself seemed endless … soon the glider’s wing span extended the full length of the small deck. Milo suddenly kicked at the railings, splintering them. A couple more kicks and the railings were gone. Jan backed away from the edge. The idea of jumping into the black void supported only by a flimsy arrangement of silk, hollow metal poles and wires grew even less attractive.

“Quickly!” urged Milo. “Get your weapons on and then get into this harness.” He was already climbing into his own leather harness, which was attached by wires to the centre of the glider. She hurriedly strapped on her swords and knives then got into the harness. It fitted around her thighs and waist. The glider, at this point, was resting on its rear wing tip; from the centre, where the harness wires were secured, extended a triangle made up of the three metal poles. “Take hold of the bar—like this,” said Milo as he grabbed the pole that formed the base of the triangle. Jan did likewise, her heart thumping painfully.