Helix Wars (25 page)

He continued, wishing Kranda were back with him.

Seconds later he heard the first explosion, and a distant Sporelli cry.

Kranda, doing her dirty work.

He stopped again, exhausted, and peered up through the trees at the hilltop. The knob of rock was stark and bald. Not for the first time, he wondered at Kranda’s insistence that they make it their destination.

He climbed, frequently on all fours, slipping and sliding as tiredness got the better of him. At one point he paused to regain his breath, bracing himself against a tree-trunk. He looked around and saw, fifty metres to his left across the scree-covered incline, the dark shape of a Sporelli soldier, legs braced against the gradient. As he watched, paralysed, the Sporelli raised his rifle and aimed directly at him.

He started as he heard the detonation of Kranda’s rifle. Fifty metres away the Sporelli soldier dissolved into an atomised cloud of bodily fluids. Three further explosions sounded and for a brief second Ellis found himself pitying the Sporelli troops. What supernatural being must they think themselves up against? An invisible force that appeared from nowhere and slaughtered at will...

He set off again, and felt something grip his arm and almost lift him up the gradient. He glanced to his right. All he could make out, where Kranda should have been, was a crazily fractured scene of forest and sky.

“Why... why the summit?” he panted.

“Save your breath!” Kranda said.

They came to the last of the trees. Ahead stretched a rocky incline denuded of vegetation. If the Sporelli stood any chance of killing them, then this is where it would happen.

This fact had clearly occurred to Kranda, too, for a second later she barked, “Don’t struggle. Just relax.”

Ellis felt strong hands enfold him and he was lifted suddenly from his feet. He tried not to cry out in alarm as he was whisked up the hillside. He felt his cheeks forced against his skull as if he were undergoing g-force pressure. His vision was a blur. One second he was standing under the last of the tree-cover, and the next Kranda had deposited him on the far side of the summit.

Ellis looked around, searching for a cave entrance.

“Where the hell...?” he almost wept.

He heard the thrum of distant engines, drawing closer, and when he looked up he saw the shape of the approaching Sporelli flier.

“I thought you said...” he began.

“Human,” said the Mahkan testily, “please cease your whinging.”

Ellis made out a blur of movement beside him, and heard the crack of Kranda’s rifle.

Up above, the Sporelli flier disintegrated into a rapidly plummeting fireball.

He looked down on the surrounding forest. He made out the small figures of Sporelli troops on a dozen sides, closing in.

He began to feel rather exposed.

“Kranda?” he said.

“Look!” the Mahkan said, pointing.

He looked into the sky, but saw nothing. Seconds later he felt a blast of intense heat against his face and a hail of grit sand-blasted his exposed skin. He made to turn away, but Kranda grabbed his arm and hauled him towards the source of the heat. One second the rocky surface of the hillside was underfoot, and the next he was stumbling up the sloping grid of an invisible ramp.

The next thing he knew he was aboard a vessel and stumbling along silver corridors. The sensory anomaly was disconcerting as his brain attempted to catch up with his vision. They came to a triangular flight-deck and Kranda thrust him into the co-pilot’s seat.

“Strap yourself in, Jeff. This is no human toy we’re talking about here. This is Mahkan engineering.”

He heard an explosion and thought the Sporelli had scored a direct hit. But Kranda was laughing.

“The neutron drive, kicking in.”

Then Ellis was smeared against the padded couch, his cry stopped in his throat. Through the delta viewscreen he saw the cloud cover, and an instant later they had punched through it and were streaking away from Phandra.

He closed his eyes and thought of the Oasis Bar and ice cold beers.

Then he thought of Calla, imprisoned somewhere down there, and his stomach turned sickeningly.

“Next stop: New Earth,” Kranda said.

T
WELVE
/// H
ER
F
UTURE,
F
ROM
N
OW
O
N...

1

M
ARIA LAY ON
her back, buoyed by the salt-rich New Earth ocean, and stared into the sky. She made out the tiny speck of a shuttle approaching the third circuit high above, and realised that she hadn’t given her husband a thought for the past few days. In fact, she hadn’t given any aspect of her old life much consideration. Even the grief that stabbed her whenever she thought of Ben was diminished here, in the company of Dan Stewart.

It was great to be away from the day-to-day demands of ministering to the healthcare of the liaison team. She had nothing to think about but the blissful present and the near-future, the time when she and Dan would be together for good and wouldn’t have to sneak off on these stolen, clandestine trysts.

A Sail wafted above the ocean and for a moment became a paper-thin ellipse as it turned sideways-on. There was something soothing in its stately, floating progression from sea to land; it rose on a thermal, presenting its entire face to the watchers below as if putting on a show especially for their benefit. She wondered what it might be like to hitch a ride across the ocean, as Hendry and the others had done two hundred years ago.

“Maria! Drink?”

Dan was standing on the beach, holding up a long glass. She swam to the shore until her knees butted the fine sand, then fought the sea and stood.

Dan watched her stride from the waves and smiled. “Venus,” he said appreciatively.

“Wasn’t she blonde?” Maria asked.

“Maybe, but not as beautiful.”

“Flatterer!” she laughed, flicking water at him. She took her ice-cold lager and settled beside him in the shade of a parasol.

“I was thinking about what you said the other day,” she said. “About the Mahkan.”

“What did I say?”

“You were telling me about our spy and the tame Mahkan,” she said. “It made me wonder why they’re so hostile towards us.”

He shrugged. “You’ve got to understand their mind-set, Maria. They’re a strange race. Bellicose, at least historically. Their homeworld was apparently a savage, dog-eat-dog place. They transported something of that across the light years, culturally and genetically. And that bellicosity has been tempered only a little by the influence of the Builders.” He grunted a laugh. “I have a theory: the Builders only gave the job of engineers to the Mahkan to keep them out of trouble. That might not be strictly true, of course – they’re damned fine engineers into the bargain.”

“But are they hostile to all races, or just us humans in particular?”

“Probably all, but specifically us because they see the human race as inherently weak. Also – and this is supposition – they resent our role as Peacekeepers. Probably think they could do a better job.”

He propped himself up on an elbow and looked at her. “You said Jeff once saved...”

She pulled a face, irritated by the mention of her husband. “Hard though it is to believe, he did once save a Mahkan’s life.”

Dan smiled. “That doesn’t quite square with the picture of him you’ve painted. Dull, apathetic, lazy...”

“That’s just around me,” she said. “Anyway, he said it was pure luck he was in the vicinity of the stricken Mahkan craft at the time. All he had to do was match velocities and get from his ship to the Mahkan’s.”

“That all? Simple. A cake walk.” Dan laughed. “You don’t get to be a shuttle pilot, running missions between the worlds, if you’re an apathetic dullard.”

She sat up, frowning as she tried to find the right words in reply. “It’s hard to explain. The character he presents to me and to the world is quiet, introverted. He rarely expresses an opinion, or tells me what he’s feeling or thinking.”

“Was he always like that? Surely not in the early days?”

She reflected. “I think he was. And... and that might have been one of the things that attracted me to him. He was strong, silent. Still waters run deep, kind of thing. But it soon became maddening. And then after what happened to Ben...”

“Some couples find themselves drawn closer together after such a tragedy.”

“And others find themselves split apart,” she said. “I suppose we became a little closer immediately after the accident, but then...” She shook her head. “Jeff wouldn’t talk about what had happened, how he was feeling. He... it was as if he was unable to grieve, as if he just bottled it all up inside him.”

He reached out and took her hand. “That must have been hard for you.”

She gave him a smile. “It was hell. All I wanted to do was talk, find some... some catharsis, some comfort from him, and he was like a stone. Ungiving.”

“It was his way of coping, Maria. Some men are like that.”

“It was... selfish, Dan. Insular. He didn’t for one moment think about me, about what I needed, what I was going through.”

He squeezed her hand. “Did you try to get him to speak about what he was feeling?”

“Hundreds of times, until I realised the futility of it. He just didn’t empathise with me. He’s... he’s one of the most unsympathetic men I’ve ever met.” She looked up and smiled. “But then he doesn’t even look into himself, think about what he’s feeling. He’s one of the least self-analytical people I’ve ever known, too.”

Dan laughed. “He must have some good points?”

“Give me a few days,” she said, “and I might think of one.”

Impulsively she straddled Dan and pressed her crotch against him, feeling his erection hard against her pubic bone. “Anyway, less of him...”

He smiled, pulled her face down to his, and kissed her.

They returned to their room, made love for the rest of the afternoon, then ate at an outdoor restaurant in the tourist complex next to the sea.

Later, as the sun was going down, Dan led her from the restaurant and along a sea-front walkway. There was a sense of purpose in his stride. “Where are you taking me Dan?”

“Indulge me, Maria.”

She laughed. “Don’t I always?”

“I hope you won’t find this boring...”

She knew what was coming. She’d seen him eyeing a softscreen ad in the foyer of the hotel earlier. A learned Mahkan engineer-academic was giving an informal talk at the resort that evening, entitled, unimaginatively enough, Helix Engineers. It was not normally, to say the least, something she would find remotely entertaining.

But seeing that Dan was interested...

“Boring?” I spent ten years with Jeff, she thought... “Of course not. Let’s go along.”

The venue of the talk was a community dome which occupied a hill beyond the Builders’ ziggurat. Around a hundred people, humans and aliens alike, sat patiently in the auditorium as the resort’s Director of Operations introduced the Mahkan, Dr Lien’vyrran.

Maria and Dan took their seats. She found his hand and squeezed.

The engineer, almost three metres tall, dominated the stage as she rose and moved to the dais. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said in the gravelly English, “I am delighted to be here tonight. My talk today will focus on the rudimentary aspects of my people’s work as engineers of the Helix...”

Her voice droned on. Maria sank deeper into her seat and closed her eyes. Minutes later she was asleep.

2

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
they were enjoying a drink in the hotel’s penthouse bar when Dan’s wrist-com chimed.

He swore. “This had better be good...” He accessed the call. “Yes?”

From across the table, Maria made out the face of Dan’s PA, a young man named Chen Li. She heard him say, “...apologise for the interruption. We’re trying to locate Dr Ellenopoulis...”

Dan frowned. “And what on earth makes you think...?” he began.

Chen Li went on, “We’ve been trying to contact Dr Ellenopoulis directly, but her own com seems to be switched off. I was wondering if you knew of her whereabouts?”

Dan said gruffly, “I am not in the habit of keeping tabs on every member of my team during their vacations, Chen.”

“No, sir, of course not...” But something in the PA’s tone suggested that he knew about Dan and Maria.

“Who needs to speak to her?” Dan asked.

“Someone from the Governor’s office, sir. They said it’s high priority.”

High priority, she thought. But who might want to contact her from the Governor’s office?

Dan said, “Well, I suggest you get back to them and suggest they try her com-code again, Chen.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll do that.” Chen cut the connection.