Helix Wars (22 page)

He and Calla stepped from the barge onto the cobbled quayside. The barge woman had been ushered off ahead of them, protesting to the Sporelli soldier.

One of the troops on the bridge called out a single, sharp command, and the soldier raised the butt of his weapon and brought it down on her skull. The woman staggered and fell.

The commander on the bridge called out again. With mounting incredulity and the realisation that he could do nothing to prevent what he knew was about to happen, Ellis watched as the soldier lowered his weapon, directed the barrel at the sobbing Phandran on the ground, and pulled the trigger.

Calla cried out and buried her face against Ellis’s chest.

He could only stare at what had become of the woman’s head.

He looked away, gripping Calla as she wept, and felt a creeping numbness steal over his senses.

He looked back at the soldier who had murdered the Phandran, and something the Sporelli did then – a gesture that struck Ellis as even more callous than the execution – provoked him to act. The soldier frowned with disgust at a splash of brain adhering to the toe of his boot, casually extended his leg towards the twitching corpse, and wiped his boot on the woman’s dress.

Ellis cried out and dived at the Sporelli. Behind him, Calla sobbed his name, but he was already upon the soldier and threw a punch at his face. The soldier looked incredulous, staring at Ellis as he tripped backwards and fell to the cobbles beside the bargee’s corpse.

Another soldier stepped forward, raised his rifle, and struck Ellis in the face with its butt. Within seconds, he was surrounded by a dozen Sporelli, and his only regret as the blows rained down on him was that his impetuous action had parted him from Calla.

Then the solid haft of a rifle crashed against his temple and he fell to the ground unconscious.

T
EN
/// V
ENGEANCE

1

K
RANDA BROUGHT HER
flier down beside the looping road that wound its way up to the Retreat of Verlaine, then strode down the ramp and stared up at the mountain redoubt.

In many ways it reminded her of her family manse back on Mahkan, merging with and springing from the very rock of the mountain. The Phandran example, however, was more elaborate than her mother’s functional abode. Here they had added towering belvederes and turrets which extended beyond the summit of the mountain, and carved arcane symbols into the cliff-face, circular mandalas and something that looked very much like the Helix.

And this was the place to which Jeff Ellis had been brought. The possibility that he was still up there, recovering from both his injuries and the poisoning, was almost too much to hope for. Kranda thought that it would be better to prepare herself for the worst: that either Ellis’s injuries or the alien toxins had taken his life.

She moved to the edge of the road and stared down at the plain far below. There was no sign of Sporelli activity, either on the ground or in the air. She drew a breath, looked up at the ethereal Retreat, then began the winding ascent, jogging at first and then, as she hit her stride, sprinting up the switch-back road.

In a matter of minutes she was standing before the vast arched entrance of the Retreat. A timber door loomed over her, and set into its ancient timber was a tiny door that barely reached to her waist.

She deactivated her varnika’s shield and was casting about for a bell-pull, or some other means of summons, when the hatch opened and a small Phandran face peered out.

“Mahkan,” the figure said, her varnika translating the words with barely a delay, “you are expected. Please, enter.”

She was relieved to find that they did not expect her to squeeze through the hatch. The vast door swung open minimally, allowing her to enter. She found herself in a great foyer which dwarfed the dozen or so red-robed Phandrans there to witness her arrival.

“You were expecting me? The yahn-gatherers got word to you?” But even as she spoke the words, she knew that that would have been impossible. She had covered, in her flier and on foot, perhaps fifty kilometres in a matter of fifteen minutes. The yahn-gatherers could not have communicated with the Retreat so rapidly.

“We will explain,” said a red-robed Phandran. “Please, if you would care to follow me.”

The Phandran was walking away, leading her across the foyer. They climbed a narrow staircase which twisted up past several floors and which came eventually to a wide corridor leading towards the front of the Retreat. The beamed ceiling was twice the height of a Phandran, but Kranda had to duck awkwardly as she followed the alien.

They came to a small door and she was forced to bend almost double in order to enter the long, low room which stretched for fifty metres. The entire far wall comprised a great window which looked out over the valley and the looping road she had climbed.

The Phandran gestured to a couch, which Kranda folded herself into with little room on either side. Four Phandrans might have occupied the couch; not for the first time since arriving on this world, she felt gigantic and clumsy beside these fairy folk.

The Phandran took a seat opposite her.

“I came here...” Kranda began.

The Phandran gestured. “We know why you came, Kranda’vahkan; and your arrival here was forecast.”

She smiled uneasily. “By whom?”

“By our Elders, our Diviners.”

She tilted her head and stared at the smooth, lined face of the old Phandran. “So your people can look into the future...” She was unable to keep a touch of scepticism from her words.

“The human, Jeff Ellis, is no longer here. Yesterday we sent him, with one of our people, to the coastal town of Mayalahn.”

Kranda sat back, almost laughing with relief. She felt emotion constrict her throat as she said, “So he’s alive?”

The Elder inclined his head. “He came here with injuries from a shuttle accident, and with poisoning. My colleague nursed him back to full health. Yesterday he was deemed fit enough to travel.”

Kranda closed her eyes briefly. She considered the Sporelli’s cruelty earlier, and contrasted it with the altruism showed by the Phandran people. She said, “If you can tell me where I might find Jeff Ellis, I will take him from Phandra to his homeworld, New Earth.”

“On that point there is news both good and bad. We sent him on a sail-rail boat with a colleague named Calla; however, the Sporelli learned of this and necessitated a change of plan.”

“Which was?”

“He and Calla left the train between stations, some point after the town of Lamala, and proceeded to the coastal town of Mayalahn by means of canal barge. At present they should be somewhere upon that journey; I wish I could be more specific.”

Kranda said, “And what of the Sporelli? Have your Diviners looked ahead and assessed the success of their aggression?”

The Elder turned a tiny hand. “Their destiny is that of all aggressors: what they might gain in material possessions from their acts accrues only spiritual loss.”

Which tells me
, Kranda thought wryly,
absolutely nothing.

The Elder said, “The scourge of the Sporelli is like a storm that will, in time, play itself out.”

Kranda smiled. “Thank you for saving Jeff Ellis,” she said. “Without you...”

The Phandran stood and drew a device on small wheels towards where Kranda sat. It appeared to be a wooden representation of their world, a barrel on an axis which the Elder now rotated. He pointed to a marked range of mountains and said, “We are here. This, here, is the sail-rail station at Trahng. Here is the coast, and the town of Mayalahn, their destination. It was our plan to have the human travel to D’rayni, where he might achieve communications with his people.”

She stood and moved to the door. There she paused and turned to the Elder. “One more thing,” she said, “you said that the Sporelli found out about Jeff Ellis and Calla’s plans to take the sail-rail train?”

The Phandran said in barely a whisper, “The Sporelli arrested several Elders, among them Diviners, and... and applied certain pressures. The Diviner in question would have gladly died rather than divulge information concerning the human, but the Sporelli threatened his family.” The Phandran gestured with a small hand. “Also, the fact that the Diviner
knew
that the human would successfully elude the Sporelli made his apparent weakness acceptable.”

“So the chances are that Jeff is in Sporelli custody?”

The Phandran inclined his head. “That is so.”

Kranda spat, “The Sporelli are truly evil.”

The Phandran reached up and laid a small hand on Kranda’s gigantic claw. “We do not believe in evil, just
hran
[untranslatable]. Perhaps you would say, ‘the consequence of unthinking and unfeeling actions’?”

“Perhaps we might,” Kranda smiled. She thanked the Phandran once again and took her leave.

2

S
HE BROUGHT THE
flier down in a field beside the sail-rail track, ten kilometres beyond the town of Lamala.

Hovering at an elevation of fifteen metres for the past three hours, she had followed the course of the sail-rail track west and scanned the margin of farmland directly beneath the track, searching for some evidence of where Ellis and Calla might have alighted.

Despite the Elders’ prognostic assurance that all would be well, Kranda half-expected to find their broken bodies in the fields beneath the tracks. How might they have managed to alight from a speeding sail-rail train, she asked herself, other than by jumping?

Now she left her flier and crossed to the track. There, directly below the lower central rail, was an indentation in the loam, and another a few metres further on.

She knelt and examined the impact point, the scuffed earth that told of a body’s impact. She scanned the immediate area and made out small footprints leading from the far impact point to this one. And to the right, leading off between rows of tall bushes, were the joined tracks of both small and larger footprints.

Kranda took off and sprinted through the serried crops, and minutes later came to the broad, serene waters of a canal.

So Ellis and Calla had reached this far, at least, without being apprehended by the Sporelli.

She returned to her flier and eased it into the air high above the fields. She followed the line of the canal as it arrowed west, scanning for any sign of the Sporelli. She had confidence in her flier’s shielding technology, and in the Sporelli’s inability to detect it... but it would not hurt to be a little circumspect. She had come so far, had almost located Ellis and the Phandran, and it would be stupid of her now to risk everything through lack of vigilance.

Ahead, she made out the crude timber architecture of the coastal town. She judged she was around three kilometres from its sprawling outskirts, which was near enough for safety’s sake. There was a good chance that Mayalahn, a town on the coast opposite the world the Sporelli intended to conquer, would be crawling with invading troops.

She brought the flier down in a fallow field half a kilometre from the canal, intending to proceed into the town on foot.

She ran from her ship and crossed the farmland to the canal, then followed it through the outskirts of town. She proceeded with caution along the narrow alleys and streets that flanked the water. The last thing she wanted was to collide with a hapless Phandran; the impact, at speed, could be fatal to the tiny, bird-boned natives. She slowed when she came across locals going about their daily business, and slipped past them, swift and silent. She found herself holding her breath as she did so, amazed despite herself at the miracle of the varnika.

The timber buildings became taller and more densely packed. She was coming to the commercial heart of the town now, a noisy hubbub of commerce, where traders unloaded carts of goods and barges deposited their cargoes.

She arrived at a cobbled square beside the canal and halted. Ahead was a Sporelli tank, and beside that, a troop-carrier. Perhaps twenty black-uniformed soldiers were stationed strategically around the square. A crowd of Phandrans had gathered at the far side, staring silently at the troops. Kranda eased herself behind a timber pillar and stared out.

The crowd appeared mute with shock or fear, and at the same time she detected an undercurrent of anger. She wondered if some atrocity had taken place close by... and her suspicions were heightened when she made out, on the cobbles beside the canal, a small group of locals. She increased her varnika’s visual magnification. The Phandrans were scrubbing the cobbles, sluicing what might have been blood into the still waters of the canal. From time to time they looked up at the Sporelli troops watching the clean-up operation impassively, and Kranda made out fear and resentment in their eyes.

To her right, a group of Phandrans stood watching and occasionally exchanging comments. She increased her auditory gain and listened. Seconds later, the translation came through.

“...a good woman, worked the barges all her life.”