The Crimson Tower by Alex Marshall	Table of Contents Part 2 appears in this issue.
Lord Limbold Builds a Machine part 1 of 4

Up the winding stair went the manservant. At intervals, lamps in deep niches gave out a steady glow but the tower was windowless and the light insufficient to do more than throw his black and monstrous shadow high up the curving inner wall.

At length the stair finished at an opaque crystal door studded with brass. He paused, breathing hard, heavy hands clutching at coarse-aproned thighs. Then straightening his spine and squaring his shoulders through long habit, he knocked. There was no reply and he waited. When the echoes had faded down the stairwell, he knocked again.

“Come!” spoke a voice this time, muffled by the thickness of glass. The manservant pressed a panel and as the door slid aside he stepped through into the weirdly lit space beyond.

The master’s observatory was the highest chamber in the crimson tower. Above only the roof arose twisting to a needlepoint far above the dust of the city. Darkness was falling outside though the hour was not long past noon. Through the tower’s great window the manservant glimpsed the sun spitting its final, feeble rays through lowering skies.

“Well?” The master turned to him, scowling from deep shadow beneath the cobalt lamp that was bound to his forehead. Another burned from a retort above the master’s head; the hard bluish light revealing some details of the machine upon which he was working.

The manservant lifted a hand, needing to shade his eyes after the gloom of the stair. He rarely had excuse to enter his master’s most private sanctuary, and curiosity made him pause. Though the cobalt lamps were bright, they were designed for close work and the light did not carry. The remainder of the room was dim but the glow of the setting sun revealed something of what it held: the polished chequers of the floor, the long benches crowded with paraphernalia of all kinds and, upon a dais in the centre of the floor the vast, gleaming bulk of the machine.

“Speak man, for pity’s sake!” the master demanded. “God help me that I should be waited upon by idiots in my dotage. Why we cannot breed servants as well as soldiers I cannot begin to imagine.”

“Count Voormidrath, Warlord of Tyre and Keeper of the Seven Keys awaits in the visiting hall,” said the manservant evenly.

“Voormidrath, here!” the master exclaimed. “Confound it all! Do we have a tryst? I can think of none. Bah! Am I now losing my wits as well as control over my appendages!” He threw down his instruments in disgust and tore the lamp from his brow. “Why can’t they leave me be, Haggai?” he asked rubbing at his eyes. “God knows it’s hard enough to make progress without these constant interruptions.”

“I understand, lord,” said the other. Though long retired from active service, Haggai was an infantryman to the core and as such he was all too familiar with the vagaries of the military elite.

What he did not understand however, was the weapons master’s increasingly erratic behaviour. Day after day he shut himself away in the high tower. He withdrew from his duties, refusing food and shunning sleep as he became ever more involved in his work. He had missed Victory Day and Hero Day celebrations. When the city had come out to commemorate the Sack of Haran and the Beth-el Martyrs, Lord Limbold had again been absent from the rolls and, Haggai knew, his name had circulated on a ripple of disapproval that had reached exalted ears as well as the ordinary.

“Count Voormidrath refers you to a despatch of ten days since, my Lord. A convening of the council I believe?” Haggai watched as hopeless realisation dawned in his master’s face. It was a fine face — a noble face with an unusually high forehead above the beetling brows. Lord Limbold was also possessed of a long bony nose, an atavistic trait viewed as a weakness in a race bred for war.

“Of course, of course,” sighed the weapons master. He covered his face with his long-fingered hands for a moment before pushing back his shock of bone-white hair and turning upon his servant a gaze that was both wild and despairing. “I’d better not keep the good count waiting. Now where did I...?” Muttering, he strode over to a high table, heaped with parchment and drawing instruments.

“I have your things ready downstairs,” Haggai said. “Blue cloak, epaulets and brocade. The vice-chancellor will be there.”

“The vice-chancellor?” Lord Limbold snatched up a scroll, thought for a moment and then set it down again, selecting another. “This will do!” he said. “Come now!” He waved it at his aide as he crossed to the door. Then more to himself than to his manservant he whispered: “They won’t know. How would they? More than likely read it upside down anyway!”

Brushing past the huge servant, Lord Limbold was through the door and descending the stair without a backward glance. Haggai raised his hand to the sensor and clicked his fingers, plunging the room into shadow. His eyes lingered for a moment on the machine, silhouetted like some monstrous arachnid against the sunset glow beyond the glass. Carefully he closed the door and followed his master down the long staircase.

Haggai caught up with him in the dressing room where Lord Limbold was struggling into his exoderm. He had climbed the trestle and stepped into the boots and leggings and now he was fighting with the atmosphere suit’s bulky, armoured shoulders.

Haggai went to assist. He removed the suit’s stand which was getting in the way and took the weight, gritting his teeth with the effort whilst Lord Limbold worked his arms through the sleeves. The manservant activated the automatic fastenings and helped his master with the manual ones. Then he went to fetch cloak and weapons belts as the older man drew on the gauntlets.

With the cloak in place, Haggai stepped back and ran a critical, parade ground eye over the whole. Deftly he adjusted a strap here, a buckle there, straightened the epaulets and nodded.

In the visiting hall they found Count Voormidrath. The hall was dimly lit and the count was standing by the window following the progress of a large, black beetle across the glass. Encased in armour from head to foot, the Count was resplendent in scarlet cloak and the red and gold insignia of his family and rank. Through the window they spied the undulating luminescence of the Phosphor Sea, eerily pale in the darkness. Haggai stood to attention.

Lord Limbold said, “They say that those will outlast all of us.”

“Eh?” said the count, without turning.

“Insects. Even when the sun is spent and night finally descends a few of them will survive. It’s incredible, really. We should respect them.”

“Respect them?” the Count extended a thumb, squashed the insect to the glass then wiped his gauntleted thumb on the wall. He turned around then. “That is what I respect, weapons master. Strength and force of arms!”

Lord Limbold shook his head. “And you can take off that hat, Voormidrath!” he said testily. “There’s nothing wrong with my filters. The air in here is as clean as any.”

Laughter, muffled and mechanised, wheezed from the Count’s transmitter but with the gentle whirr of servo-assists, the great, armoured hands lifted. There was a click, a diode winked and with the hiss of inrushing air the gleaming helmet separated at the neck seal. Within, flushed and sweating, the count dispensed with humour and fixed his host with unsmiling eyes.

“I see that you’ve dressed properly for once. I suppose we must be grateful for that at least!” he said, tucking the helmet under one arm and bearing down on the weapons master. His other hand rested carelessly on the butt of the blaster that hung from his hip.

Despite himself, Lord Limbold paled. The warlord knew his own power and he knew men. He knew how to command and how to intimidate. He knew how to organise and drive men on and he knew how to destroy and take them apart. He was precisely what he appeared to be. A perfect soldier and a peerless fighter: a warrior born of a thousand generations of warriors.

“I don’t know how you spend so much of your time locked into these,” said the weapons master indicating his own suit. “I find them so unwieldy!”

“You get used to it,” the count said with a shrug of his massive shoulders. This and indeed every movement that both men made was accompanied by the sound of the servo-motors that powered the suits and enabled four hundred pounds of rigid plates, flexible connectors, life support and weapons systems to move as though it were a second skin.

“I rarely take mine off these days. Good discipline in my view. Practice for campaigning — for combat! And think on — you never need worry about finding a place to take a squat, eh?” His alloy teeth flashed. Haggai allowed his lips to twitch in appreciation of his superior’s wit whilst keeping his eyes fixed rigidly in front.

Lord Limbold looked pained. “No doubt,” he said, “but my work is more delicate than yours. These won’t wield a 0.7 gauge socket.” He raised his gauntlets and regarded the fingers ruefully.

“Perhaps not,” Voormidrath replied, scowling as if such work was unseemly. “But as long as I can work a safety and squeeze a trigger, that’s all that concerns me! Enough now, let’s be off! I won’t be the cause of any delay and it’s something of a trip yet to the rendezvous. We’re in the desert west of the city. Sensible, I suppose. The air vice-marshall, Field Marshall Kulne and General Udin will be there as well as the vice-chancellor. A bit risky to meet here with all the recent activity.”

As if to lend support to the count’s words a muffled boom sounded from somewhere across the city and the tower shook. Lord Limbold glanced to the window, tensing for a further impact. Neither of the other two men gave outward sign that they had heard the explosion.

“You can leave your man here,” Voormidrath instructed with the slightest nod to the manservant. “I have a driver outside. Come on now!” The count was already replacing his helmet and reaching for the outer door. Hurriedly, the weapons master took his own from the stand. He was still settling it in place when Voormidrath’s armoured fist punched the wall panel. The door slid back and a freezing, noxious cloud of dust and sand gusted through. Lord Limbold activated the suit’s life systems and followed the count outside.

* * *

They climbed aboard the waiting transport, which disembarked with a sucking roar of induction engines. Lord Limbold and the count settled themselves in the spacious rear of the craft. The cabin lights dimmed. LED’s winked into life, flickering on bulkhead and dashboard and in the dark visor of the pilot: a huge, silent marine. Through the portholes, Lord Limbold watched the lights of the city fall away as the transport climbed and banked around the crimson tower — black now against the purple evening sky.

He looked aft and there, spreading away beneath like a ghostly fog was the Phosphor Sea whose listless, lifeless tides fouled the city’s wharves. It was a cesspool; a stinking, chemical soup, awash with toxins and adrift with archipelago of luminescent scum.

He saw the tubes and spheres of the treatment works rising from its margins and writhing around the curve of the bay; kiloms of desalination and detoxification plant that kept the city supplied with clean water. Or at least, what the military allowed to pass for clean water: bowel disease and infant abnormality rates spiralling upward year-upon-year said otherwise to many among the populace.

But what matter? he thought bitterly. What value a life upon a fading world, caught in the final throes of a failing sun? He had learned the answer. He knew now just how much value they placed upon such things.

A flash silvered the sky to starboard. Voormidrath rapped the glass with a knuckle and his transmitter wheezed into life above the sound of the engines.

“They’re hardly trying now, the filth! Saving their strength for the big push. But we’ll be waiting for them eh, Limbold? We’ll kick their hides back to the hills burning their filthy nests as we go!”

Lord Limbold turned his attention back through the portholes, glad for once of the imposing, blacked-out helmets that meant he did not have to meet the warlord’s eye.

But the veteran marine commander was right. The bombardment had slowed to a trickle. The Hattooshans were gathering their resources for the coming land and air assault that they hoped would wipe the city of Beth-el from the face of the earth. Most of the population had already fled, of course. What point intelligence if it is not acted upon — and swiftly? The only ones who had remained were those, including the weapons master himself, who were charged with the city’s defence.

The craft banked again steeply, showing them a dismal panorama of darkened buildings and silent factories. What was there that he would save? Nothing: not the barrack-like rows of dwellings; the huge munitions factories; the grim academies where infants learned to fight and die. Not the towering silos or the huge atmosphere plant that churned day and night, removing ammonia, methane, sulphurous oxides and other toxic fallout from a thousand centuries of war.

There is nothing here! He brooded on the terrible irony. There was nothing left worth living for, yet countless lives had been lost and more would follow trying to save it. But not he! His death was earmarked for another cause.

“There is a green hill far away...”

“What’s that, Limbold?” the count grated.

The weapons master started, not realising he had spoken aloud. “It’s nothing,” he replied. He lapsed into silence, sensing the other’s disdain even from beyond the opaque visor.

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2007 by Alex Marshall