Helix Wars (30 page)

“Won’t the Sporelli be able to detect the flier?”

Kranda drew back her lips. “It’s shielded. Their early warning systems shouldn’t pick up a thing, and therefore their weapons systems will not detect us.”

“That’s a relief.”

“But even if the Sporelli did detect the flier, I am confident that my skill as a pilot will bring us through unscathed.”

Ellis glanced through the hatch to the cabin at the rear. “It’s big enough,” he said. “I think we could easily carry a couple of dozen Phandrans.”

“They are small. We’ll be able to cram them in like cayl.”

Cayl
, Ellis thought
: the Mahkan equivalent of sardines?

Kranda leaned forward and touched a screen. A map appeared, showing the coastline of a world. “D’rayni,” she explained. “The circular pulsing mark indicates the present position of the Phandran detainees. It’s a holding station, from where I assume the Healers will be sent out to the front line, or thereabouts. It’s fringed by forested hills and crags. This coastline of D’rayni is high, wild land, and relatively cold compared with New Earth.”

“Where will we come down?”

“Here, approximately ten kilometres from the small town of Panjaluka and the holding station. You’ll test-run your varnika there. After that, I’ll try to assess whether we should approach Panjaluka by flier or on foot. With the varnikas, the latter should only take fifteen minutes. And then” – Kranda drew back her lips – “then we will assess the situation at the holding station.”

Ellis sat back, staring into the indigo of space between the circuits. “And weapons?”

Kranda indicated the racked rifles beside the exo-skeletons. “Take your pick,” she said. “Rest assured, they can all be set to stun, to allay your human squeamishness.”

Ellis smiled and closed his eyes. “I’m pleased to hear that, Kranda.”

He slipped deeper into his couch and slept.

A while later Kranda nudged him with her elbow; it was probably only meant as a light tap, but Kranda’s strength was such that it almost knocked him from the couch. “Wake up, Jeff. We’re almost there.”

He rubbed his face. “How long have I been out?”

“Four hours. I thought you might want to watch our approach.”

He stretched and stared through the viewscreen. They had dropped through the cloud cover above D’rayni and were coming in low over the sea. Ahead, an expanse of white cliffs spanned the horizon. Beyond them, grey mountains rose, bleak and forbidding. Many of the peaks were snow-covered.

“Welcome to D’rayni,” Kranda said.

“Doesn’t look that welcoming.”

“The D’rayni are a tough, rugged people,” Kranda told him. “Well-used to hostile conditions. In appearance, they’re a little like the people known on Old Earth as Neanderthals.”

He glanced at her. “You’ve read up on human history?”

“And that of many other races besides.”

“Well, let’s hope that the D’rayni put up a fight against the Sporelli.”

Kranda shrugged. “They’re almost technologically equivalent, but the Sporelli outnumber the D’rayni ten to one. Also, the D’rayni are not well equipped for war.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.”

They came in over the coastline and sailed silently between rearing mountain peaks. It looked cold and lifeless out there, in contrast to the verdant New Earth they had left. He judged they were travelling at around Mach three, but the rugged landscape changed little over the next fifteen minutes.

“What always amazes me, Kranda, is the range of worlds that make up the Helix. Ten thousand of the damned things – and the Builders made them all.” He shook his head. “It’s beyond human comprehension.”

Kranda glanced at him and pulled back her lips. “Beyond
human
comprehension, maybe. But my people are Engineers. The Builders had a long, long time to construct the Helix, Jeff: tens and tens of millennia.”

“And each world is so very different, in terms of geology, geography, biology,” Ellis said. “The logistics of what they did, the research they must have carried out on the original world before they began the transfer of the citizens...”

“More amazing still,” Kranda went on, “more amazing than the geological and biological world-building on the surface, is the engineering accomplishment that lies beneath.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine...”

“One day, Jeff, I will be honoured to take you on a conducted tour.”

Ellis laughed. “I’ll hold you to that.”

The mountain range fell away before them, becoming a chain of rucked, buckled pewter foothills. Beyond he made out a great forested plateau threaded with silver rivers. In the distance, delineating hillsides and valleys, he saw the lights of towns and villages in the cold, grey dawn. There was nowhere like this on New Earth, nowhere this cold and inhospitable; it reminded him of the documentaries he’d seen of Old Earth and the geography of far northern Europe.

Kranda said, “What’s that?”

Ellis started. “Where?”

Kranda pointed a taloned finger to the right of the viewscreen. Ellis made out a white streak on the horizon, as if a diamond had scored the leaden sky.

“It’s fast,” Kranda said. “Too fast.” She read something from a screen before her, then looked up. “Look at it go. It must be travelling at Mach ten, at least.”

They tracked its progress across the sky before them; in seconds it had travelled half the width of the viewscreen. Kranda read from her screen. “It’s moving at a little over Mach eleven, Jeff.”

Fear rose suddenly in his throat.

“The thing is,” Kranda went on, “the Sporelli don’t possess that kind of technology. Fliers, yes. But not hypersonic craft.”

He glanced at the Mahkan. “Could it belong to another race, allied to the Sporelli?”

Kranda lifted the side of her lips to reveal a row of sharp incisors. The Mahkan version of a worried frown? “I very much doubt it. There are no races along this circuit of the Helix who are as technologically advanced as the Sporelli, and my flier would have alerted me to any traffic
between
the circuits.”

“So?”

“So, though it pains me to admit as much, my people have badly misjudged the Sporelli, if they posses this level of technology.”

As they watched, something streaked away from the craft above the far horizon. Two scintillating points of light fell at an acute angle, heading towards the ground.

“What the hell?” Ellis said.

“They can only be...”

The lights impacted with the horizon, bursting with actinic explosions.

“Missiles,” Kranda finished.

Ahead, on the horizon, a city burned. Ellis watched as the supersonic craft passed from sight.

“My worry is,” Kranda said, “if they have this kind of technology, which we failed to detect, then might they posses that which renders the shuttle’s shields useless?”

Ellis said nothing, thinking the question rhetorical.

“Though perhaps I am being overly pessimistic, my friend.”

A few minutes later, Kranda called his attention to the screen. The pulsing dot of the holding station and the arrow which denoted their own shuttle were almost one – and in the distance Ellis made out a small town of squat, stone-built dwellings surrounded by forest. Though the sun was up, the cloud cover was such that the town still maintained its street-lighting.

He looked for signs of Sporelli occupancy, but saw none.

“Panjaluka,” Kranda said. “I’ll bring us down a few kays away, to err on the side of caution.”

Minutes later she eased the flier down vertically, with a deftness of touch Ellis found himself admiring. The heat of the flier’s engines ignited trees and shrubs, lending the only splash of light to the scene beyond the viewscreen. Even the foliage of the surrounding trees, he noted, appeared to be varying shades of grey.

They bumped down and Kranda cut the engines.

2

B
EFORE DONNING THE
exo-skeleton, Ellis pulled on a black skin-tight garment like a wetsuit. Then he stood on the deck of the cabin, legs apart and arms splayed, as per Kranda’s instructions, as the Mahkan laid the smaller varnika on the floor behind him. Ellis twisted and looked over his shoulder. The exo-skeleton stretched across the deck like some macabre, wasted shadow.

“This is going to feel very strange at first,” Kranda said, kneeling behind Ellis and affixing something to his heels. He felt cold metal grip his ankle. Then it was as if a series of hard metal fingers was climbing his legs with a sensation that was almost painful.

He peered over his shoulder and was surprised to see that Kranda was not assisting the varnika’s attachment: the device was working by itself, climbing up his thighs, clamping his hips, zipping itself to his body like a swift, sentient cage. Carbon spars and filaments looped themselves around his ribs and braced his neck; something moulded itself around his head like a balaclava.

Kranda said, “Prepare yourself for a sharp –”

He felt a stinging pain as a needle punctured the skin at the base of his skull. “What the hell!”

“– sting.” Kranda finished. “Don’t be alarmed, Jeff. It’s the interface. The sensors anticipate your every action and route the command to the varnika’s servo-mechanisms. Don’t move for a minute while the smartcore adjusts itself to your autonomic nervous system.”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, wondering at the extent of the varnika’s clinical intrusion.

He breathed in and out, feeling the varnika’s struts move with him. At the end of the minute he looked down to see a reticulation of carbon filaments encasing his hands like a spidery web. Experimentally he flexed his fingers, forming a fist, and the spars moved with his fingers.

Kranda said, “The varnika will enhance your perceptions, increasing the power of your eyesight and hearing, making your reactions faster. This will be a little disconcerting at first. Expect to feel nauseous for a few minutes. Okay. Now, take a small step, then another. Move towards me slowly. Your balance might be affected to begin with, but don’t panic or try too hard to compensate. The varnika will ensure you do not fall.”

Ellis took a breath and moved his right foot. He had expected it to be like learning to walk again after a period of convalescence, but the reality was that he experienced no difference with how he moved normally; what he did feel was a disconcerting dizziness and a welling of sickness in his chest. Then, amazingly, he was in Kranda’s arms, having made the ten paces across the deck in a couple of seconds.

“Hell, Kranda!”

The Mahkan pulled back her lips. “I recall the first time I used a varnika. It was a liberating experience.”

He turned and crossed the deck; his vision blurred, then caught up. He turned and paced back to Kranda, and this time his vision, enhanced by the varnika, kept up. He moved around the deck experimentally, and a minute later realised that the dizziness and nausea had passed.

Kranda fetched four weapons from the rack and handed one to Ellis. “The settings are here. Press this to kill, this to stun. On stun, the charge will render a sentient target comatose for up to a couple of hours.”

She passed the second, bulkier weapon to him. “A blaster. This is to take out buildings. The varnika will assess distance, power of charge required. Also, the varnika will increase the accuracy of your shots.”

She showed him where to attach the blaster to the exo-skeleton, down the left side of his torso. “The rifle affixes to your right arm, like this.” She slapped her own rifle to her right forearm. Filaments wormed from her varnika and secured the weapon.

Ellis held his own rifle to his right arm and watched as the exo-skeleton took possession. He moved his arm, feeling the weapon slip into his grip.

“Very well. We will go outside and you will test the exo-skeleton a little more, and the weapons. Then we will leave the flier here and head for Panjaluka. And don’t worry yourself about the cold. The varnika will thermostatically protect you from the ambient temperature.”

Ellis smiled. “That’s good to know. Wouldn’t want to freeze to death out there.”

He moved towards the hatch, and it came to him suddenly why he was here: to liberate Calla, and other Phandrans, from the Sporelli. For a split second, the idea seemed impossible.

Then he was out of the hatch and sprinting across the cindered clearing created by the flier, and the notion was no longer quite so fantastic. He stopped suddenly, in a whirlwind of ash, and turned. The flier, its tegument adapting to its background and phasing through a camouflage routine, was two hundred metres away: it shimmered one last time, then vanished. Only by scrutinising where he knew its outline to be did he make out the slight, shimmering demarcation – and that only with the enhanced vision provided by the exo-skeleton.

He turned and reached out, caught hold of a low branch and snapped it from the tree. He stood very still, staring at the branch in his right hand. It was as thick as his ankle, and he had broken it with no effort at all. He wondered why the act had felt so satisfying.