Helix Wars (33 page)

One of the officer’s subordinates said, “Mahkan?”

“Obviously! Only they have such technology. The ship was cloaked. And no doubt the individuals who led the escape were cloaked too.” He strode over to the recovering guards, who were slumped in sitting positions against the wall.

“You claim you saw nothing?”

“I...” one of the guards began. “A second before I was hit – I made out a blur of movement.”

Ellis looked across at the open gate and the two troops-carriers parked beyond. The same thought must have occurred to Kranda. She said, “Jeff, on three, make for the gate and head to your right, into the hills. One, two... three. Run!”

Ellis took off a fraction of a second after Kranda. Behind him, he heard a startled cry. “Sir! There – I thought I saw...”

Ellis heard the rattle of a ballistic weapon and heard the whine of bullets pass overhead as he sprinted for the gate. Another cry from behind, a barked order, and a dozen troops joined the firing party. Ahead, Kranda exited the compound and disappeared to the right. Ellis felt bullets whistle past his ear, and a second later he was through the gate and heading up the hillside.

Kranda cried out. “Down!” and Ellis didn’t ask why. He fell to the ground, watching Kranda as the Mahkan brought his blaster to bear and aimed at the troop-carriers. The first one exploded in a brilliant orange star-burst and a genie of black smoke. She swung and fired again, and the second carrier became a dazzling ball of flame.

The troops ran from the compound, staring at the burning vehicles and firing in random bursts of cathartic anger.

Kranda took off again and Ellis followed, and they didn’t stop sprinting until they reached the crest of the hill. There they paused and looked down on Kranda’s handiwork.

The double conflagration brightened the pewter grey countryside, the only splash of colour for miles around. Attracted by the commotion, curious locals had begun to gather, only to be screamed at by the enraged Sporelli officer. His troops fired over the crowd’s heads, dispersing them at short order.

“Seen enough, Jeff?”

“We have a saying, Kranda. Revenge is sweet.”

Kranda grunted. “Obviously a throwback to your more primitive days,” she said.

They sprinted down the other side of the hill, entered the forest and headed north-west.

S
IXTEEN
/// P
URSUIT

1

F
OR AN HOUR
they traversed the high ground, keeping in sight the highway that wound into the foothills towards the mining town of Krajnac. They watched convoys of black Sporelli vehicles snaking along the wide road: troop-carriers, beetle tanks, and vicious-looking rocket-launchers.

Ellis considered the battle that was by all accounts raging north-west of here, and feared for Calla’s safety.

At one point they stopped for food. Kranda opened a backpack and passed Ellis a canteen. “A Mahkan speciality, Jeff. It’s called keng, the closest you’ll get to human beer. Don’t worry, its mild.”

Only when he began drinking did he realise how thirsty he was. The keng was rich and spicy, not unlike sarsaparilla. He finished half the canteen and accepted a slab of condensed fruit which Kranda told him was similar to apple and good for replacing depleted energy.

As they chewed, sitting side by side while the sky darkened on another short D’rayni day, Kranda said, “I made a mistake back there, Jeff, and I hope we don’t live to regret it.” She had turned off her varnika’s shield so that Ellis could see her, and he did likewise.

“A mistake? You were brilliant. What mistake?”

She chewed, swallowed, and said, “I should have done what my instincts dictated, and not allowed the sentiments of those we rescued to influence me.”

“Meaning?”

“I should have killed every last Sporelli down there.”

Ellis stopped eating and looked at her. “And you didn’t do that because...?”

“Because the Phandrans would have been aghast. I was thinking of them, and not of ourselves.” She cast a quick glance at Ellis. “And, truthfully, I was too considerate of your own... hesitancy in these matters.”

“But why should we have killed them? We got away, didn’t we? What would we have gained by –?”

“They know that we are here!” she snapped. “They will have reported our presence to their commanders. Right now, they are in all likelihood out there, hunting for us. And, Jeff, how do we know that they don’t have the technical equipment with which to detect us, despite the varnikas? Heat-seeking devices, thermal imaging...”

Ellis shrugged, uneasily. “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he began.

Kranda buckled her muzzle. “I know what a needle is, but a haystack?”

He explained the saying, and went on, “We might be anywhere, as far as they know.”

“They will deduce that, as we’ve liberated one set of Phandran prisoners, we would be likely to attempt to liberate others. Therefore we are likely to head for the places where the Sporelli keep their prisoners. That cuts down the range of locations where they will concentrate their search.”

Ellis nodded at the logic of her argument. “Okay, I grant that. But it still leaves them with a lot of ground to cover.”

Kranda spat on the ground, a surprisingly generous bolus of phlegm that would have filled half a cup. She said, “Also, they know about the flier. That is what I am worried about. What if, this very minute, the Sporelli airforce is alerted to the presence of the flier and attempt to bring it down?”

“I thought you said its cloaking device was –”

Kranda stopped him with, “It’s not infallible, Jeff! With the right surveillance technology, weaponry...” She shook her head. “I do not want to think about it. We came here to liberate Calla and the other Phandrans, and now, because we failed to execute a few worthless invaders, we put everything at risk!” She stared at him. “Do you not admit that I am right?”

Ellis looked away, uncomfortably.

“Well?” she pressed.

Ellis considered his words, scuffing a circle in the loam with his boot. “I, along with every other human being on New Earth, was brought up to respect life –”

“As we were on Mahkan, human! You do not have a monopoly on piety!”

He went on, “We were told to believe that killing is bad. Inhuman. We were following the code of the Builders, who abhorred all violence, and they brought us here, after all. They saved us.” He closed his eyes, seeing again the Sporelli officer he had killed. “We do everything within our power not to kill others.”

Kranda made a hissing sound which Ellis interpreted as disgust. “That is all well and good,” she said. “Noble sentiments, easy to follow in the swaddled comfort of one’s safe, easy homeworld. But, when different criteria apply, different rules come into play. The equation is simple. The Sporelli invaded Phandra, and then D’rayni. This is wrong. They killed innocent sentients for no other reason than that of gain, self-interest, and the quest for power. That is wrong. Ergo, when we – who are on the side of the right – find ourselves in a life or death situation with the Sporelli, when we have the choice of either killing the evil-doers or risking our own, and others’, lives, then we should have no compunction about killing. That is the only acceptable answer. And if you do not agree, then I doubt your sanity, or your honesty.”

Ellis looked at Kranda, aware of the Mahkan’s genuine rage and bewilderment. He said, “And, if you were in your male phase, Kranda, then would you espouse the same aggressive actions?”

Kranda looked away, staring at the dimming horizon. At last she said, “As a male, I would have been less inclined to kill the Sporelli. But, and this is important, in our male phases we acknowledge our subordinate status to those in their female phase. So I would be
wrong
in opining that the Sporelli should not be killed.”

Ellis shook his head and tried not to smile. How utterly
alien
the Mahkan were! He said, “But would you, as a male Mahkan, acknowledge that you would be wrong?”

“Of course not, but the fact is that on our world, the female is always predominant, and right.”

This time, Ellis did laugh. “So therefore your predisposition towards aggression is... politically sanctioned. In other words, merely arbitrary.” He paused, staring at Kranda. “So how the hell can that be
right
?”

She muttered. “You do not understand our ways, human. You know nothing.”

Ellis smiled and said, “Just consider us humans a race of males, Kranda, with no females to put us right, okay? Then you might begin to understand my objection to killing... even when, and I grant you this, it might in the long term be the justifiable option.”

Kranda turned her long head towards Ellis and stared at him. “I understand, Jeff. I also know that you are wrong.”

Ellis sighed. “I don’t know whether I am right or wrong, Kranda. I just know that it feels very wrong to kill. Shall we leave it at that, and agree to disagree?”

Kranda barked what might have been a laugh. “You are a strange creature, Jeff Ellis.”

“I could say the same about you, Kranda’vahkan.”

He looked up, at the far horizon, and for the first time saw a glow that resembled the embers of a fading sunset. The sun, however, was setting behind their backs. The orange light in the distance could only be one thing: evidence of Sporelli munitions bombarding the mining town.

“And when we reach Krajnac?” he asked.

“We find out where the Healers are being kept, Jeff, and do our very best to rescue Calla and her people. And let us hope that the Sporelli, with what they have learned about us, are not equal to our tactics.”

She rose to her full height, towering over Ellis, and commanded her varnika to render her invisible. Transformed into an ever-shifting fractal outline, she took off along the forested hillside.

Smiling to himself, Ellis activated his varnika and followed.

2

O
NE HOUR LATER
they came to a halt on the edge of an escarpment overlooking a broad plain. The sun had set and the town of Krajnac glowed in the darkness. They watched as a Morse code of tracer stitched the night, hosing in graceful, silent parabolas from Sporelli positions to the south and igniting in the streets of the town itself. Houses were ablaze, entire streets turned into piled rubble and illuminated by the glow of the bombardment.

“But look,” Kranda said. “The D’rayni are fighting back.” To the west of the town was what Ellis took to be the mine works, a series of buildings and gantries and hulking machinery grouped around the scarred terrain of an open-cast operation. As he watched, bolts of energy spat from one of the buildings, great globes of fire like meteors which flashed across the land and detonated amid the Sporelli positions.

“I surmise that the workers are defending their mine with the only weapon to hand,” Kranda said. “The plasma bolts they employ in mining the land.”

“It’s a pretty effective weapon,” Ellis said.

Where the plasma bolts landed, molten fire spread in flowing orange waves, consuming everything in their path. Sporelli tanks and rocket-launchers exploded in silence, the sound only reaching the escarpment seconds later.

“Effective, until the Sporelli bring all their might to bear. It can only be a matter of time before the invaders prevail.” She indicated a highway far below, jammed with enemy vehicles heading towards the battle-front.

He scanned the darkened land to the south of the town, searching for an emergency field hospital. Among the block buildings on the outskirts, it might have been anywhere.

Kranda said, “We need to get closer, work out where the injured are being taken.”

“Makes sense, Kranda. After you.”

They scrambled down the incline, leaping through brush and tangled foliage, until they came to the plain. They were on the edge of farmland, stretching towards the southern extremities of the town. On minor roads and lanes to the east and west, civilian vehicles were fleeing the onslaught.

Ahead, the night-time darkness was alleviated by a constant orange glow, pulsing with each outgoing plasma bolt and incoming Sporelli missile. Even this far south the air was rent with the crump of munitions and the raging crepitation of burning buildings.

They took off at speed, heading through the fields towards the town.

Seconds later Kranda halted. Ellis stopped beside her. The stench of the burning city came to them on the wind, an eye-watering mix of incinerated building materials, charred meat, and something noxiously chemical.

Ellis felt Kranda’s hand on his arm. “There. Two o’clock.”

Two hundred metres away he made out a Sporelli troop-carrier, an open-backed flat-bed truck transporting what looked like a dozen Sporelli troops. From the agonised screams and cries issuing from the vehicle, Ellis guessed they had come across a makeshift ambulance.

“We should follow it,” Kranda ordered, and led the way.