Helix Wars (35 page)

“I’ve said I’m sorry, okay? Let’s drop it.”

“We all make mistakes, Jeff. Next time, before you act unilaterally, think long enough to consult me, yes?”

Ellis nodded and bit off a mouthful of energy bar.

Five minutes later Kranda touched his arm and indicated the night sky above Krajnac. “Look.”

He saw nothing untoward at first, just the glow of the flaming town and a high scatter of stars. Then his vision adjusted and he made out half a dozen fliers, fanning out south from Krajnac and heading towards the escarpment.

“They surely cannot have traced us here,” Kranda reassured him. “They are merely following the direction we took. But as a precaution I suggest we activate the shields.” She did do, and became a vague, dark shape beside him. Ellis commanded his Varnika to do likewise and felt instantly safer.

They retreated further into the tree cover, sat down against a trunk and waited.

Ellis heard the sound of a flier, then through the foliage made out its sequencing lights pass overhead. He tensed, expecting gunfire to rain down at any second. The engine noise passed, diminished, and he breathed a little easier.

Then a second flier roared high above, but this time the growl of its engines remained constant. Ellis judged it to be about fifty metres away. He heard a cacophonous splinter, as if a hundred trees were being felled, followed by a roar of flames. Kranda was on her feet. She tugged Ellis after her. “This way.”

They ran, dodging tree trunks both vertical and horizontal. The varnika enhanced his vision, gave him night-sight in which the world appeared in stark contrast: the darkness became darker, and everything else stood out in bold relief. Obstacles before him glowed, and with the assistance of the exo-skeleton he leapt them with an ease his unaugmented self would never have managed.

And his augmented hearing made out the harsh cries of Sporelli soldiers on their trail.

The first gunshot, he thought optimistically, was literally and metaphorically a shot in the dark – surely they could not be seen in the half-light, shielded as they were? The second shot – a laser this time – fizzed by his head and burned a neat hole in the tree trunk before him.

He increased his speed, dodging this way and that through the zigzag obstacle course of the tightly packed forest.

Ahead, Kranda turned and fired. A blazing bolt of light zizzed past Ellis, warming the side of his head.

He wanted to look behind him, to reassure himself that he had put distance between himself and his pursuers, but at the same time fear prevented the action. He ran on, expertly leaping logs and shrubs, dodging between tree trunks. He found a second wind and his breath came easily. Five minutes later he ventured a glance over his shoulder. The forest behind him was clear of Sporelli. He took a breath, relieved, but counselled caution.

They moved on, jogging now, until they came to a ravine that cut through the forest. They stepped out under the stars, and for the first time in a long while they could neither hear the Sporelli bombardment nor see its fiery effects.

Silence filled the night.

Kranda moved a little way down the bank of the ravine and stopped. She was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “My flier has been detected.”

Ellis’s stomach turned. “What?”

“As it was flying back over the D’rayni coastline, the Sporelli detected its presence. It is being followed, I think by a flier, but...”

Ellis stared at Kranda’s outline. She had sounded far from sure. “But...?”

“It’s keeping pace with my flier. I have instructed my flier
three times
to take evasive action. And each time the pursuing flier simply matched its manoeuvres.” She paused. “Sporelli fliers should not be able to do that.”

Ellis recalled the supersonic craft they had seen much earlier in the sky above D’rayni.

Kranda shouted something in her own language, then for his benefit said, “The pursuing craft is firing. My flier should come into view within minutes. I will instruct it to land nearby. With luck, if we can get aboard and I can pilot it...”

“But won’t the Sporelli craft simply blast it when it lands?”

“I’m working on the assumption that the Sporelli ship is not a flier but an interworld ship. It is fast, but not that manoeuvrable. I have instructed my ship to take low-level evasive action and then land close by. It is my hope that the Sporelli ship will overshoot, and we’ll board the flier and be away before it compensates.”

Ellis took a shaky breath. “I hope you’re right.”

Seconds later something screamed overhead, making him cry out loud. He looked up and made out the fractal shape of the Mahkan flier as it banked steeply overhead. A split second later something appeared above it, a vast ship whose underbelly eclipsed the night sky.

He ducked into the cover of a nearby tree, guessing what was to follow. He looked up and saw the interworld ship bearing down on the Mahkan flier like some mammoth beast. As they watched, a blinding red light lanced from a gunnery nacelle slung beneath the interworld ship. The laser struck Kranda’s flier and disabled its visual shield. It wobbled, then listed precariously. A second laser blast speared the night sky, and this one was the
coup de grace
. The flier tipped with spectacular, slow-motion grace, slid out of the sky and hit the ground with a muffled
crump
a hundred metres away.

The resulting explosion lit up the forest with a brilliant orange glare. Ellis covered his ears, but even so the detonation was deafening.

Above, the interworld ship moved away slowly, its task accomplished.

Kranda raised her blaster, then paused. “I am tempted, Jeff, but I fear giving away our exact position.”

They watched the Sporelli ship disappear from sight.

“So there we have the answer,” Kranda said. “The Sporelli do possess space technology.”

Ellis felt his stomach turn. “And with it?” he began.

“The thought does not bear close examination.”

He worked to calm his heartbeat and regain his breath. “We need to work out how the hell we’re going to get out of here,” he said.

“I’ve already thought about that,” the Mahkan replied.

“So have I,” Ellis said. “We head for the coast, try to find a boat to cross the sea to Phandra. There, the Phandrans will help us.”

“An option,” Kranda opined, “but the second best option in the circumstances.”

“The second best? So what do you suggest?”

“That we head inland,” Kranda said, “to the central mountains.”

“Inland?” Ellis gasped, but Kranda was already running down the ravine, calling after her for him to follow.

Wearily, dog-tired now and aching in every limb, he did so.

One hour later, as he jogged side by side with Kranda, the two not having exchanged a word in all that time, he heard the sound he’d been dreading. He looked up, through the tree cover, and made out the running lights of a Sporelli flier.

“We’ve got company. Bastards have found us. What now?”

“See, ahead. One o’clock, through the tree cover.”

He saw the rearing grey summit of a starlit mountain range. “Mountains. Great. I’ve never been so relieved to see mountains. But... but can you tell me – why the hell are we heading towards it?”

He sensed forbearance in Kranda’s reply. “You’ll see when we get there, Jeff.”

They emerged from the forest and stood on the edge of a glacial ravine. Across it, perhaps a kilometre away, was the slope of the mountain-side.

Ellis looked up, searching for the Sporelli flier. He heard its engines, distant at first but closing in.

“Over there,” Kranda said.

The flier came down in the forest at their backs, a couple of hundred metres away. Ellis heard the splintering of trees and then the crackle of burning foliage.

“Now,” Kranda said, “with the last of your energy, as fast as you are able, follow me.”

“Where to?” he asked desperately.

“See the lateral rent in the second highest peak?” Kranda said. “There.”

Ellis took a vast breath. “Could you tell me... please tell me why the hell we’re climbing to a cave in a bastard mountain peak? I mean, when we’re there, so what?”

“Wait and see, Jeff. Now, hurry. The Sporelli will soon be upon us.”

Kranda sprinted away from him.

Ellis took a deep breath and sprinted after her.

He felt terribly exposed as he crossed the glacial ravine, no longer in the cover of the forest and vulnerable as they were to detection by the Sporelli. Starlight illuminated the silver-grey back of the glacier, and ahead the mountain loomed in a dark, thrusting dagger-shape. He felt his boots crunch the ice as he took long, leaping strides, eating up the metres. Ahead, Kranda performed an evasive zigzag manoeuvre.

He took a quick look over his shoulder. The distant forest was a blaze of light where Kranda’s flier had crashed and the Sporelli flier had come down, igniting the trees. As yet there was no sign of the troops themselves. He knew better than to feel any relief: they would show themselves before long.

He wondered if Kranda was heading for high ground so that she would be better able to send out a mayday signal. It was the only possible reason he could think of to explain why they were heading towards the mountain peak. He wanted to trust in Kranda, who had served him well so far, but he had to admit that for the first time he was having his doubts.

Something exploded in the ice three metres to his right, sending up a spume of superheated steam. He used the near miss to his advantage, dodging into its ghostly plume and racing up the incline. He judged that in another hundred metres he would reach the face of the mountain where it inclined steeply from the glacier. Kranda was already there, leaping in a switchback course up the grey face of rock. The Mahkan turned just long enough to loose a shot from her blaster, then continued climbing.

Another Sporelli shot slammed into the ice to Ellis’s left. He looked over his shoulder briefly. Half a dozen Sporelli troops were crouching in the tree-line, three of them bringing weapons to bear. One of their number had a shoulder-mounted heat-seeker and was instructing his comrades where to fire. Ellis aimed his rifle and fired with little hope of hitting the target.

He made it to the rock face and followed Kranda up the steep incline. He was sure he would never have made the ascent but for the varnika; its speed propelled him from shallow foothold to foothold, where unassisted he would have fallen. He found handholds in the rock without really thinking about it, relying on his augmented vision to locate handy fissures and his extra strength to literally pull him through.

At one point he hung on with one hand and glanced down and across the glacier. Three soldiers were advancing towards the cliff-face, while the others remained in the tree-line, their weapons poised. More explosions rained around them, ricocheting noisily and spraying granite shrapnel in every direction. He winced as shards tore at his arms, drawing black blood in the meagre starlight. He raised his blaster and aimed at the ground before the advancing troops, fired and opened a melting pit at their feet.

The Sporelli assault only fuelled his flight: adrenalin-powered, augmented by the varnika, he hauled himself after Kranda and caught up with her in minutes.

He looked up, but from this foreshortened angle he was unable to make out their destination, the rent in the peak. “How far?” he gasped.

Kranda came back with, “Fifty metres, perhaps a little more.”

The gradient eased off so that he was able to scramble on all fours for twenty or thirty metres. He looked up and made out a dark slash in the grey rock up ahead. He was beginning to think that they might make it to the cave uninjured when he heard the crescendo of a flier’s engine. He looked up. A black wedge was rounding the peak, a hundred metres away, and banking straight towards them.

The gradient levelled and became a wide ledge that gave access to the diagonal gash of the cave mouth. Kranda was already crossing towards it, and a few seconds later Ellis pulled himself onto the ledge and sprinted.

Kranda paused long enough to aim her blaster and fire. The bolt streaked towards the flier, winging its flank. The flier wobbled and dropped towards the ledge. Laser fire streaked from the cockpit, striking Kranda. She yelled out and fell to her knees, swore and staggered upright.

“Kranda!” Elis cried.

The Mahkan was up and running again. “I’m okay, Jeff. A superficial burn...”

More laser fire lanced from the flier, striking the rock a matter of centimetres from Ellis’s heels. He felt intense heat on his calves and yelled in pain. He slowed, despite the desire to reach the cave, and looked up. The flier was fifty metres away and dropping fast, and the ledge was wide enough for it to land with space to spare.

He followed Kranda into the darkness of the cave. The Mahkan activated a light on his varnika, illuminating the widening tunnel ahead. Ellis sprinted, hearing a grinding impact of the flier on the rocky ledge outside soon followed by harsh Sporelli cries.

He yelled. “They’ve got us cornered, Kranda!”

She cut him off. “Save your energy for running. Follow me.”