Read Ellie Quin Book 3: Beneath the Neon Sky Online
Authors: Alex Scarrow
Ellie Quin Book 3: Beneath the Neon Sky (14 page)
‘Hard to say, sir.’
The hangar bay doors closed again swiftly with a loud reverberating rattle, shutting off their view of the barge, now little more than a black dot in the sky. Deacon sighed and shook his head. Mason’s little creation had managed to bolt for it after all.
This was one of the contraband hangars, of that he was almost certain. So, that meant there was going to be no record of the ship in orbit that this barge belonged to, nor any details of its flight plans.
‘Fine…if that’s how we’re going to play it,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Fine.’ He suddenly found himself laughing…a desperate wheeze of a laugh; a spasm of exhaustion, released tension and a hint of exasperation, or maybe all three.
‘If that’s how you want to play it…I’ll just have to quarantine every other fucking planet in this damned system.’
He could do it. He had the goddamned authority to do it.
Ellie stared out of the tiny, grime-encrusted porthole at the receding world outside. Here it was, the moment she had been fantasizing about for as long as she could remember, the moment she finally waved goodbye to Harpers Reach. In her fantasies, the window through which she would see it all gradually dwindle away to nothing more than a dusty red spot in space, had been big; a large viewing bay in some luxurious inter-system pleasure cruiser, surrounded by the great and the beautiful. And in this particular escape-from-this-cruddy-world fantasy, that she had played over and over in her head countless times since she was old enough to realize there was a much larger world beyond her immediate horizon, she had not been cradling the blood-spattered face of her closest, her
only
friend.
‘Can you see it Jez? We finally made it off-world, just as we said we would,’ she said gently stroking her pale cheek. ‘We did it!’
Jez groaned fitfully and opened her eyes to stare out at the sight. She smiled up at Ellie and nodded. ‘Yeah, we did it girl. Not just cube-chiks now….we’re space-chiks,’ she replied weakly. A droplet of blood trickled from her nose, and rolled down across her face into Ellie’s lap. It left a trail almost as dark as Jez’s favorite shade of lipstick.
‘Shhhhh. Rest now Jez….You’ll be alright. I know you will. We’ll get you a doctor or med-unit onboard the ship. You’re going to be fine.’
Jez nodded, closed her eyes, and settled gently in Ellie’s lap, her breathing growing quieter, fainter.
Ellie fumbled in her pocket for the data-disc the old man had handed her. She pulled it out and slotted into her palm-dictionary. One file. An audio file…
‘For twenty years I’ve been agonizing over how exactly I was going to tell you about who you are…what you are. For twenty years, I’ve only ever known you as L-239-HR-2457709….and since I’ve been here observing you, I’ve learned that your parents called you Ellie.’
‘So, now I have a name…Ellie, perhaps it’s time now that I introduce myself and tell you a little about who you are.
My name is Edward Mason. You came to me as a paternity request and I personally processed you. Before you ask…yes…you are a product of your parent’s genes. You ARE their child. But you’re also a bit more.
You’re special Ellie, so very special. You are the only way humanity is going to survive.
So you have to stay alive.
‘You have to travel Ellie. You have to run. And you’ll have to be so very careful. The Administration, know everything about you and they’ll do anything to find you, and to kill you.’
‘I had hoped that you would never need know of these things, or even to know of me…I had planned always to watch you from afar, help you discreetly….ensuring the winding path you travelled through Human Space was trouble free. But that’s all changed now that they know. I’m so sorry. Now you’ll have to scamper and hide from the Administration’s bloodhounds, like some kind of vermin. And they’ll never give up on you. But Ellie…you must travel, you must. The only advice I can give you is to seek the worlds in our universe that are torn and troubled…and my god Ellie, there are so many out there - Human Space is falling apart. But you wouldn’t believe that from what you see on the toob, eh?’
‘Fly Ellie, fly away as fast and as far as you can. And stay alive as long as you can. God, I wish there was more I could do to help you.’
No more. That was all there was. That seemed to be it.
Her thumb absently thumbed the record switch of her diary as she looked down at Jez. ‘So, I’m…I’m someone’s weapon? Is that it?’ she laughed bitterly. ‘Hufty, it’s me. I just found out I’m some sort of virus, or something. That’s what I am. A fregging weapon someone’s made. Boring old Ellie Quin.’
Her gaze settled on Jez. ‘Hey Jez, did you hear any of that stuff on the disc?’
Jez was still.
‘Jez?’
She was perfectly still now.
‘Oh God…Oh crud. Hufty, I think she’s…she’d dead! Her blood’s all over my lap. It’s all over me. Oh no…please don’t leave me alone in here, please don’t die!’
She patted Jez’s cheek. ‘Jez? Wake up! Can you hear me? Please…oh crud! Please don’t die!’
Nothing. She clamped her hands to her face. ‘I really can’t do this on my own. Not without you. I’m just nothing. I’m stupid and lost…and I want to go back home! Please…don’t die, don’t leave me alone here. Ple-e-e-ease!!!!’
Her voice sounded shrill. Echoing back at her from the hard metal bulkheads.
It’s over, limp-chik. This is how it ends. Now just calm down and let it happen the way it’s supposed to happen. You can’t fight fate, Ellie girl. You can’t fight fate.
It was dad’s voice. Soothing, reassuring.
‘I suppose you can’t,’ she whispered to herself. She thumbed the palm-diary off and put it in her pocket. Just her and Jez now. Just them. She stroked Jez’s dark hair absently, all of a sudden resigned and quite ready to face to whatever future was ahead of her.
‘We did it in the end, though, Jez, didn’t we? You and me? We managed to get offworld.’
A solitary tear rolled down her cheek, past lips pressed grimly together, onto her small pointed chin, dimpled and creased as she struggled to hold herself together. It clung to her for a moment before splashing down on to Jez.
With a soft groan Jez stirred painfully. ‘Ughhh…this would be such a great moment to savor, if this didn’t hurt so fregging much, and you weren’t dribbling on my face.’
OMNIPEDIA:
[Human Universe open source digital encyclopedia]
Article: ‘The Legend of Ellie Quin’
The trail of Ellie Quin grows warm again after she leaves the frontier world of Harpers Reach. It is perhaps a great tragedy that few records or data from that world survive to this day, that we may pore through and try to construct a more complete picture of what her life was like as a child on the colonial farm, and more importantly, what she did, what she saw, heard, smelled, experienced in that long dead city.
But that world belonged to Ellie Quin’s childhood and, once she finally passed through the weak embrace of its atmosphere, it would never again feature in her short yet fantastic life.
Ahead of her lay a destiny of far greater magnitude and affect, than perhaps any other human in history could lay claim to.
Many scholars have argued that the time she spent there in New Haven forged the personality that would later have such an utterly complete impact on Human History.
Of course others have argued that everything that made Ellie Quin into Ellie Quin was already inside her from birth; perhaps the best example of the age-old nature versus nurture debate.
There are a few biographers, however, who suggest that most of the qualities that made her such an inspirational historical character lay inside her, inert, waiting to be awoken. But it was the experiences that lay in her immediate
future
as she headed away from Harpers Reach that would awaken within her the things that would eventually make her great, and change things so completely, that we, many centuries later still owe her memory our undying gratitude.
To be continued…..
In
ELLIE QUIN: BEYOND THE GATEWAY
(Book 4 of the Ellie Quin Series – coming SOON!)
Ellie and Jez have managed to escape the planet of Harpers Reach and find themselves on ‘GateWay’ - a floating megacity in space. Home of this solar system’s media companies and digi-stream broadcasters
Jez is talent-spotted by a producer who promises to make her a superstar. Meanwhile Ellie is discovering Human Space is nothing like how the newsies and sopa-drams depict it.
And Deacon, having lost Ellie’s scent…finally picks up on it again.
There’s only one way out of this system for the girls…but will they find it in time?
Coming soon, exclusively to
Amazon Kindle!
ALSO BY ALEX SCARROW
The TimeRiders series:
Time travel is already happening, there are already people coming through from
our future into our past…and they are corrupting it, contaminating it. But, a
small covert agency has been set up to preserve our history and our timeline: the
TimeRiders.
Embark on a profoundly exciting journey through history with this nine book
series published by Puffin. Available on
Amazon Kindle
, iBookstore, and in
print in all good book stores.
Alex Scarrow spent the first ten years out of college in various rock bands trying to get a record deal. Failing miserably at that he went into the computer games business as a digital artist.
After a decade in the games business, he ended up as a senior designer working on high‐concept projects for next generation consoles.
Finally he got bored of all of that and turned his hand to writing. His first manuscript, A THOUSAND SUNS was published in the UK by Orion in 2005. He now has a number of thrillers out and has recently released the first book in his Young Adult series TIMERIDERS, nominated by Puffin as BEST ADVENTURE FANTASY in their recent BEST SEVENTY CHILDRENS BOOKS OF ALL TIME press release.
Alex Scarrow is fast building a reputation as one of the UK’s most original writers.
“Alex is plugged into the zeitgeist ‐ his themes of religious chaos, environmental catastrophe and the dangers of unchecked power are perfectly in tune with the times.” ‐ Orion Books.