Helix Wars (41 page)

He smiled again, that travesty of pleasure on the wreck of his sunken features. “You understand little, Phandran,” he said scathingly. “You will keep me alive and free from pain for three further days, and then I will have no further need of your services.”

She thought she did understand, then: was the invasion of the neighbouring worlds, the slaughter of innocents, nothing more than a ploy by the president to gain bargaining chips, to hold worlds to ransom so that he might negotiate – with the technologically superior humans or the Mahkan – to have his illness treated?

She said as much to him now, and was surprised by his reaction.

“What? Go grovelling before the humans and the Mahkan, begging for the largess of their medicines?” He shook his head, and the look he bestowed on Calla then was almost pitying. “No, I have no need to go seeking alms from any alien race. In three days my people will have both the means to vanquish any race on the Helix, and I will have a cure for my ills.”

He is truly mad
, she thought;
his illness, the fear of death, the privilege of untrammelled power, have all tipped the balance of his sanity.

“How...?” she began.

He waved. “That you will find out in time, Calla. Now, the pain increases.” He winced. “Like a knife within me...”

She leaned forwards, placed a soothing hand on his chest, and closed her eyes.

4

O
VER THE COURSE
of the next two days, as he conducted the business of state, she was constantly at his side, soothing his pain and easing the worst effects of his illness. He was forever in meetings with military officers and civilian officials, issuing orders and overseeing plans, poring over maps of neighbouring worlds with his generals and schemata of the Helix with officers in grey uniforms whose insignia – arrow-shaped craft above a symbol of the Helix – indicated they were members of his space-fleet.

Her presence caused comment at first, doused by the president’s barked rebukes, and soon she was ignored. Frequently she was called upon to lay hands on the gasping president, and his aides regarded her with suspicion at first, and then, as her ministrations brought relief to their leader, manifest respect.

She stared at the maps the Sporelli studied, and tried to intuit what they were planning, but their slippery alien minds and harsh language defeated her. They were planning something, something which threatened the safety of the Helix and all the peaceable peoples upon it, and Calla was powerless to comprehend the threat or lift a finger to act against it.

At night she slept in a small room adjacent to the president’s, so that she could be on call at all times. In the small hours of her second night on Sporell, she could not sleep and stood by the long window in her room, staring at the lighted city spread far beneath her.

Just as she brought relief to the president’s suffering, she thought, she could perform the very opposite. She could use her powers to close down the failing vitality that was keeping the man alive. She could... and she winced at the thought... kill him.

And in so doing, perhaps, avert the catastrophe that was about to befall the Helix...

But she had never killed in all of her ten years, never even taken the life of an insect. It was against everything in which she believed... and it was not an option she could resort to now.

She knew, in her heart, that salvation would come from another direction.

As she stared out into the freezing Sporelli night, at the lights that illuminated this supremely ugly city, she wondered where Jeff Ellis and his Mahkan companion might be now.

T
WENTY
/// I
N
T
HE
P
RESIDENTIAL
T
OWER

1

E
LLIS CROUCHED ON
the edge of the ziggurat half a kilometre from the presidential tower. From this elevation he could see over the high wall to the rows of winter cacti which, so Kranda had told him, were the president’s favourite plant. The tower rose over the city like an inverted black icicle.

The dull sun was going down and darkness crept over the streets of Kharmand. Ellis was grateful for the warmth generated by his varnika.

There was limited activity on the streets below. Small, blocky ground cars puttered along the wide triumphal boulevards, something ludicrous about the magisterial avenues being used by such rudimentary vehicles. As they watched, propaganda beams lanced into the air and pasted slogans on the underside of the clouds. His varnika translated the bold lettering as, ‘President Horrescu leads Sporell towards triumph and prosperity.’

The words alternated with images of the president, a small, thickset man in middle-age. It was easy to see in his dark, deep-set eyes the brutality that his troops on Phandra and D’rayni were making manifest. Ellis looked away from the aerial image: those eyes seemed to be staring directly down at him.

He said, “I wonder if the citizens know how ill the bastard is?”

Kranda grunted. “Everything they tell the populace is a lie. The truth is an unknown commodity, here on Sporell. Even his image is a lie. In reality the president is around eighty years old.”

“How the hell did they get themselves into such a situation? The Builders rescued them from themselves, and instructed them in how to form a peaceful, fair society.”

“You know the Builders give guidelines only. They don’t enforce their views.” She barked a laugh. “That would be against their principles.”

“So when something like this happens, when one of their saved races goes off the rails and threatens others, they just sit back and let it happen?”

Kranda gave him a quick glance. She said, without a hint of irony, “They handed on the mantle of Peacekeepers to you, the human race. It is for you to uphold the peace so vaunted by the Builders.”

“You never know, by now the Peacekeepers might have moved themselves to do something.” But, even as he spoke the words, he knew it was a forlorn hope.

Kranda grunted again. “We have a phrase on Mahkan, Jeff. Coyti might turn vegetarian.”

“And on New Earth we say ‘Pigs might fly.’” Ellis laughed. He looked at the tower. “So...” he asked at last. “Any ideas?”

“We could try to scale the outer wall, but I don’t like the look of those.” She indicated the small, glowing domes that lined the top of the wall. “My guess is that they’re alarms, motion-sensitive.”

“Surely someone must use the gate from time to time.”

“Unless the arch is purely ceremonial, and for security reasons they have hidden entrances.”

“Always assuming, of course, that the president is at home.”

“According to my information, he spends most of his time in his official suite, tended by his aides and medics.”

Ellis increased the visual magnification and scanned the presidential grounds. Lateral walkways radiated from the tower walls, running between raised beds of spiky silver cactus plants. He looked for any indication of openings on the inner wall’s long curve around the tower, but it seemed to be manufactured from one seamless section of dull white, marble-like substance. He wondered if Kranda was right and the tower was accessible via underground passageways.

Kranda barked something in her own tongue. She pointed, and Ellis watched as a convoy of military vehicles trundled along the wide avenue encircling the presidential tower.

Kranda wrinkled her muzzle and gave a snort, which Ellis knew to be a laugh. “And look, riding in the leading open-topped staff-car...”

Ellis switched his enhanced vision to the leading car and saw the thin, imperious figure of a uniformed Sporelli officer staring ahead.

“I see him, but...”

“I came across the coyti while searching for you on Phandra. He was the officer who personally gave the order for the mind-wipe to be used on you.”

“Nice man.”

“His arrival here is both good news, and bad.”

“The bad first.”

“I suspect he’s here to report our presence on D’rayni... and the discovery of the access chute in the mountain peak. They might be tyrannical, but they’re not stupid. They know that we now have access to their planet.”

“So they’re here to bolster security?”

Kranda thought for a second, then said, “They could not know of our express intentions, but they might surmise we aim to strike at the heart of their empire.”

Ellis looked at his alien friend. “And the good news?”

“They’re approaching the gated entrance. When they enter, so do we. Come on.”

Kranda sprang to her feet and darted towards the drop to the next shoulder of the ziggurat. He followed, a hard knot of apprehension in his gut. The Mahkan vaulted over the low wall and landed with the grace of a gymnast five metres below. Ellis jumped, flexing his legs and landing beside Kranda on a paved terrace.

They ran to the edge of the shoulder and jumped again, landing this time in a cactus garden that Ellis suspected was some good citizen’s obsequious attempt to mirror that of his glorious leader.

Kranda paused before another low wall and peered down. Ellis joined him. The street was three metres below them. A gaggle of pedestrians had stopped to watch the military cavalcade, pushing towards the front of the sidewalk. Kranda jumped and Ellis went after her.

They found themselves at the back of the murmuring crowd, over which Ellis watched the convoy as it grumbled towards the gates. Just as he was wondering how they might pass through the press without creating an alarm, a police car drew up and three uniformed thugs climbed out. Their very presence, silent though it was, and the fact that they carried evil-looking carbines, was enough to disperse the crowd.

Kranda touched his arm and whispered, “We follow the last vehicle in the convoy. Once we’re inside, move to the left of the gate and we’ll take it from there.”

The staff car approached the gates and, slowly, they opened to admit the convoy. Kranda took off, crossing the wide avenue with Ellis in her wake.

The last vehicle in the convoy passed by. They gave chase and caught up, tucking themselves in between a troop-carrier and the high wall. Frost scintillated underfoot, and once or twice Ellis almost lost his balance.

The troop-carrier slowed even further as it approached the gates. They hurried along in its shadow as the carrier turned, its tracks grinding with a deafening cacophony. Ellis crept after Kranda into the compound, exhilaration vying with apprehension.

Once inside, he followed Kranda and darted left. He searched for cover. It would have been nice to have had a more substantial bush to duck behind, but the horticultural beds between the radial pathways bore only thorny succulents, half a metre high at most.

Kranda was crouching against the wall. Ellis dropped into a squat beside her, peering over the cactus garden at the convoy drawing up in the square courtyard before the tower.

Troops jumped from the carriers with a crunch of boots and deployed themselves in an enfilade around the tower walls. Kranda commented, “Certainly looks like they’re expecting guests...”

“Look,” Ellis said, heart kicking with panic.

He indicated a trio of troops being addressed by the officer Kranda had pointed out earlier. The trio carried shoulder-mounted devices, sickeningly familiar from their time on D’rayni.

He looked around again, desperate for cover.

The soldiers with the heat-seeking devices were deploying themselves along the tower wall, checking the settings of the heat-seekers prior to hoisting them onto their shoulders.

Kranda was thinking ahead. “Follow me!”

“Where to?”

But the Mahkan was up and running towards the parked vehicles of the convoy. They came to the squat beetle shape of a tank and ducked behind it.

Ellis said, “Fine. Now the bastards can’t see us... but how the hell do we get past them?”

He raised his head above the armour of the tank and glanced towards the tower. Two of the soldiers were concentrating the attention of their heat-seekers on the area directly before the tower’s portico’d entrance. The third soldier, twenty metres away, was swinging his device back and forth across the area Ellis and Kranda would be forced to cross if they wished to reach the tower.

“I’ve thought of that,” Kranda said. “We watch him, calculate the duration of his sweeps and time the blind spots. I suspect we’ll have long enough to get to the tower’s wall, and behind the guards, before his heat-seeker passes this way again. Then we make our way to the entrance. Look.”

The grey-haired officer and three of his underlings were standing beneath the portico, the officer engaged in an animated altercation with someone out of sight within the entrance.

Kranda said, “We have a gap of ten seconds when the heat-seeker sweeps away from us. That should give us enough time. When I give the word, follow me.”

Ellis watched the soldier with the heat-seeker. He swung it towards the tank, past it and across the courtyard, paused and came back again. Kranda gripped Ellis’s arm and squeezed as the soldier panned the device past them. “Now!” she hissed.