Helix Wars (32 page)

“What do we do?”

“We move in, with speed at first, and then when we reach the town itself, with more circumspection. Fortunately it’s not a busy place, and the majority of its inhabitants appear to be indoors against the cold.”

“Or the Sporelli invasion,” Ellis pointed out.

“That too,” she said. “Follow me.”

They took off and sprinted down the frost-hardened hillside towards the outskirts of town.

The moorland soon gave way to fields planted with rows of round, green vegetables. Occasionally Kranda’s steps impacted with the globes. If any locals had been watching they would have beheld the mysterious spectacle of the vegetables detonating spontaneously in a sudden ejecta of shattered foliage. Ellis’s own boots crashed through the frosted globes, and it felt as if he were kicking goldfish bowls.

They came to the road and Kranda slowed to a jog. The occasional domed car beetled along, lumpish D’rayni citizens hunched at the controls. If they noticed the disruption of air caused by the varnikas’ shields, they gave no indication. Ellis drew alongside Kranda and they jogged along the road. He felt vulnerable; it seemed impossible that the locals could not see him, and every time a vehicle swished past he started involuntarily.

The holding station to the left of the road, a hundred metres away, resembled a warehouse constructed from slabs of black stone. It stood behind a low wall of the same stone topped by a laser barrier, its two blue horizontal vectors the only colour in the vicinity. A timber gate gave access to the yard.

A few seconds later, Kranda halted beside the gate and Ellis stopped beside her.

He looked up at the stave of lasers, bright against the grey sky. “How do we...?”

Kranda interrupted. “Stay here. When I open the gate, slip through.”

He was about to ask just how Kranda intended to do that when the Mahkan approached the gate. He made out a blur as she reached up, gripped the top of the gate, hauled herself up and rolled swiftly
through
the lasers. They flickered, and Ellis caught the reek of cloth and what might have been singed flesh.

Seconds later he heard the crunch of boots on the other side and the gate opened minimally. He slipped through and Kranda shouldered the gate shut.

“You okay?” he whispered.

“A little scorched, no more,” Kranda replied.

The building before them was grim and foreboding. He wondered if Calla were in there, and how she might react to his unexpected arrival. He smiled to himself. Unexpected? She might already have sensed his presence.

A metal door gave access to the building, with three barred windows on either side.

He felt a strong grip on his upper arm. “Listen!”

A pair of Sporelli soldiers came around the corner of the building, strolling casually, weapons slung over their shoulders. They appeared at ease, chatting to each other and totally oblivious of Kranda and Ellis.

Nevertheless, Ellis felt nervous at the sight of the Sporelli. The pair passed the façade of the building, turned the corner and strode from sight. He let out a relieved breath.

Kranda said, “The token guard. They circle the building every... approximately one minute and thirty seconds. This way.”

She moved to the nearest barred window. Ellis followed and peered within, heart thumping at the possibility of finding Calla.

A dozen robed Phandrans huddled around a brazier in the centre of the concrete floor. One or two were lying on their backs, ill or injured, and were being cared for by their fellows. A guard stood before the door, rifle directed negligently at the floor.

Ellis looked desperately for Calla among the seated and standing Phandrans, but could not see her. He feared she might be among the sick.

One Phandran did look up, towards the window. Kranda said, “They know we’re here. I just hope they don’t inadvertently alert the guard.”

Another Phandra glanced their way, and another, then both pointedly looked away and spoke quietly to their fellows.

“What do we do?” Ellis asked.

Kranda gripped his upper arm. Ellis looked to his right, along the front of the building. The two Sporelli guards came into sight and strolled towards them.

“Retreat to the gate,” Kranda said.

Ellis ran the intervening ten metres and pressed his back against the gate as the guards strolled by. He told himself to trust in his varnika, but he felt naked as the guards passed a matter of metres away without as much as a sideways glance.

They turned the corner and passed from sight. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being invisible, Kranda.”

“I admit it is not a natural state,” she said.

He looked back towards the barred window. “And now?”

“The Phandrans are suffering, certainly from the freezing temperature, maybe from more serious ailments.” A pause, then: “We get inside and tell them what to do next.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“We can rescue of all the Phandrans, but they must be prepared.”

“Rescue?” Ellis began, then smiled. “The flier, right?”

“I have instructed it to come to us. It will reach here in precisely... four minutes.”

“That leaves the slight problem of getting in there.”

Kranda said, “That is no problem at all, Jeff. This way.”

She shot off towards the entrance, and Ellis joined her.

A minute later the Sporelli guards came into sight again, strolling casually around the corner. Kranda pressed herself to the metal door and Ellis did the same. When the guards had passed by, less than half a metre away – so close, in fact, that he could smell their rank body odour – Kranda surprised him by rapping loudly on the metal at her back. She took Ellis’s upper arm and dragged him away from the entrance.

The guards halted, then turned and stared at the door.

The guard within unlocked the door and peered out. He spoke to the pair, who replied in evident mystification.

Kranda acted. She darted forward and the door flew open, as if caught by a gust of non-existent wind, and darted inside. The guard stood back with a brief cry of surprise. Ellis followed, turning sideways and slipping past the guard with centimetres to spare.

All three guards were now engaged in a bemused altercation on the threshold. One stepped back inside, looked around suspiciously, but saw nothing untoward. He reported back to his fellows, then returned inside and bolted the door.

Ellis followed Kranda to the central brazier and the knot of Phandrans gathered there.

A quick glance around the expectant faces of the diminutive aliens, and the four lying on the floor, was enough to confirm that Calla was not among them.

Kranda crouched behind the brazier and Ellis joined her. The Phandrans pointedly looked away, but one woman, red-robed and graceful of movement, came towards them. She knelt beside a shivering Phandran, caressed his forehead, and spoke a few words in her soft, sibilant tongue.

To Ellis’s surprise, her words, translated, sounded in his ear-piece. “You are a Mahkan, no? And a human?”

Kranda whispered, “That is so. We are here to help you.”

“Your technology is truly miraculous, Mahkan.”

“As is your ability to sense us, Phandran,” Kranda whispered.

Ellis looked over the brazier at the guard beside the door. He was absorbed in attending to his nails with a pocket-knife.

Kranda was saying, “...your fellows, are they ill?”

“Several of us came down with food poisoning. We are doing our best to ease the pain of the invalids. They will survive.”

Ellis said, “A Healer named Calla, was she with you?”

The translated reply came: “We were twenty, to begin with, but the Sporelli moved several of us to where the fighting is intense.”

“And Calla?”

The Phandran remained stroking her patient’s forehead. She said, “Calla, yes. She was taken from here a day ago.”

“And was she well?”

“She was well, human, yes,” the Phandran said, and Ellis smiled with relief.

Kranda asked, “Do you know where she was taken?”

“She was taken with six others to a mining complex over one hundred kilometres north-west of here, where the D’rayni were putting up strong resistance. That is all we could gain from the minds of the Sporelli guards.”

Strong resistance, which said to Ellis that there was the possibility that Calla might be caught up in the conflict.

The Phandran was saying, “I sense that you have a flying ship, which will aid our escape from here. But the guards?”

“Don’t worry yourselves about them,” Kranda said. “We’ll deal with the guards.”

“We – and I speak for all my fellows incarcerated here – would not want the Sporelli killed or even injured. They are innocents, caught up in –”

Kranda said, “We will not kill them, merely render them unconscious. My flier will arrive in a little under two minutes. It will come down in the compound before the building.”

“We understand,” said the Phandran.

In his ear-piece, Kranda said to Ellis, “I’ll stun the guard in here, then deal with the pair outside. When I give the signal, lead the Phandrans outside.”

Kranda rose from her kneeling position and streaked towards the door. The guard looked up at the last second, sensing her presence. Ellis heard a quick fizz, saw a burst of white light, and the guard crumpled to the floor with a grunt.

Kranda eased the guard away from the door, opened it and slipped outside.

Seconds later Ellis caught a glimpse of the exterior guards moving towards the open door, exclaiming in alarm when they saw their slumped colleague. They never made it across the threshold. Kranda appeared behind them. Two quick flashes of blinding white light, and they twisted to the ground, unconscious. Kranda dragged them inside and eased the door shut.

Thirty seconds later she said, “The flier approaches. Okay, Jeff, bring them out.”

Ellis turned to the Phandrans and began to say, “The ship has landed. Follow me.”

But the Phandrans were already moving, some hurrying towards the exit, while the invalids were assisted by their carers. Ellis moved to the Phandran lying beside the brazier, a young woman as slight as a ten year-old human. He knelt and slipped his hands beneath her legs and upper back. She was feather light when he lifted her, assisted by the exo-skeleton. He hurried after the others, bringing up the rear.

The flier’s engines had blasted the concrete compound and for a few seconds the radiating heat was the only evidence of its arrival. Kranda issued a command and the ship’s cloaking device deactivated and it popped into existence, eliciting a chorus of gasps from the milling Phandrans.

A ramp extruded and Kranda led the way into the ship. The Phandrans followed, looking about them in wide-eyed wonder. Ellis hurried up the ramp, carrying the Phandran, and gently laid her on a couch in the passenger cabin.

Kranda said to the elder Phandran, “I have instructed the flier to take you back to your world. You will be ferried to the mountain retreat of Verlaine. And do not worry about being intercepted. As you saw, the ship can cloak itself.”

She gestured to Ellis and they ran down the ramp.

Seconds later the ramp retracted, the engines powered up, and the ship vanished from sight. Ellis stared at where it had been and made out a fuzzy outline like the visual effect of an incipient migraine.

Kranda called out, “We have company!”

Ellis felt his heart kick in panic as the gates swung open to reveal two troop-carriers. He pressed himself against the wall, Kranda beside him, as the blurred outline of the flier rose with a deafening roar of engines.

A dozen Sporelli troops burst into the compound, shouting out loud and firing wildly. One of the soldiers sprinted towards the open door of the warehouse, only to be caught in the downblast as the flier’s main drive fired. The Sporelli cavorted in agony as he was instantly incinerated. His comrades cried out and fired into the air, aiming at where they thought the flier might be. Ellis heard the ringing clatter of the bullets as they ricocheted off the ship. The roar of its engines diminished as the flier swept over the warehouse and headed for the coast.

“Kranda?”

“Stay put. Weather the storm, as you humans say. When I say so, follow me.”

Ellis pressed himself against the wall and watched the pantomime of consternation play itself out before him.

Half a dozen soldiers clattered into the warehouse, only to emerge seconds later bawling in their ugly tongue that the prisoners had escaped. The other troops scanned the heavens impotently, their expressions torn between rage and bewilderment. The guards Kranda had disabled were dragged from the warehouse and questioned by an irate officer. Groggy, one of the trio shook his head and gestured helplessly.

The officer snapped something to the milling troops, and Ellis’s varnika offered up the translation. “Search the place, inside and out! Then go into the town and questions the locals. If the Mahkan had accomplices on the ground...”

The troops split, hurrying to obey his orders.