Helix Wars (42 page)

She rounded the tank and sprinted across the courtyard with a loud crunch of boots. Ellis winced at the noise and followed Kranda across the frosty concrete towards the tower wall.

They passed within three metres of the soldier, who was swinging the heat-seeker their way again. Ellis ducked and crept past, peering up at the soldier. He was close enough to make out the soldier’s determined expression, as if his life depended on successfully following orders. For all Ellis knew, it did.

Seconds later he pressed himself against the tower wall, panting. Kranda tugged him onwards. No time to rest. They crept along the façade, behind the guards, towards the grand portico.

They came to a pair of thick white columns and paused behind them.

The tall, imperious officer was arguing with a uniformed young man who Ellis guessed was a member of the president’s security team. Their exchange was too hushed for his varnika to translate, but the outcome was that the officer’s argument prevailed and the young security official reluctantly stepped aside to let the officer and aides to pass within.

Kranda waited until the security officer turned and followed them inside, then she gestured to Ellis. Heart pounding, he followed the Mahkan towards the sliding door. They slipped through a second before the door snapped shut.

2

T
HEY WERE IN
a vast marbled foyer, dazzlingly white, whose only decoration – not surprisingly – was a ten-metre-high holographic representation of President Horrescu. The officer and his aides, joined by three uniformed security men, were debating beneath the inscrutable stare of the president’s image.

Without warning, Kranda left Ellis and approached them, appearing to Ellis as an eye-watering blur – as if the marble of the foyer were shifting slightly of its own accord. Only when the Mahkan stopped within earshot of the Sporell officers did her image settle into the background, invisible to the naked eye.

Seconds later she returned. “They were expected, but the president’s health is failing fast and his security team was unwilling to allow the officer an audience. The officer said he had vital information and it was imperative he see the president in person. It looks as if he’s got his wishes...”

With a face like thunder, the young security officer gestured for the older soldier to proceed. The party strode along a corridor leading from the foyer.

“We follow. Where we find the president,” Kranda said, “we’ll find Calla...”

Ellis smiled at the thought. They followed discreetly, five metres behind the officer and his men. “All that remains, then,” he said, “is the small matter of getting her out of here and away.”

The Mahkan hissed, “We will address that problem when we come to it.”

They hurried down a long, wide corridor hung with images of President Horrescu in various triumphal poses, opening factories, inspecting his troops, addressing massed crowds.

Ahead, the officer and his men, escorted by the trio of security officials, paused before a wide door set into the wall. The group stood around in silence with the patience shown by all races when waiting for an elevator. Ellis swore to himself. “Damn. What now? We can’t enter the lift with them.”

Kranda gripped his arm and whispered, “See, beyond the elevator...”

A helical staircase occupied a recess a few metres beyond the elevator doors.

“Fine,” Ellis hissed, “but how will we know which floor...?”

“Observe. See the light in the lintel above the elevator door. See how, when the cage approaches, it sheds illumination across the corridor?”

The elevator doors opened and the Sporelli officers stepped inside. As soon as the door slid shut, Ellis and Kanda sprinted along the corridor and launched themselves up the spiral staircase. On the way, Ellis noticed, with amusement, that a Sporelli interior decorator had had the notion of painting the handrail in an approximation of the planets and oceans of the Helix itself. Ellis ran his hand over world after world, sea after sea, as he sprinted up the staircase with a rhythm that became tedious with repetition.

Kranda halted as they arrived at the floor above. Ellis peered past her into the corridor. A second later a patch of rising light strobed up the far wall.

They continued their swift corkscrewing ascent.

Ellis laughed, and over her shoulder Kranda barked, “What?”

“Just a thought – we might have to climb all the way to the top.”

He wondered what would happen if they met a Sporelli on the way down. The staircase was just wide enough to accept Kranda’s bulk. At the speed they were travelling they’d do the hapless Sporelli significant injury and, more worryingly, alert the authorities to their presence.

They came to the second floor, and again the light strobed on upwards.

Ellis wondered how they would have managed the ascent without the aid of the varnikas. Sprinting up one floor might have been possible, even two at a push, but certainly not three... or four... or five... as they were doing now.

He drew a breath, feeling the ease with which his muscles were working, his lungs pumping evenly. He might have been taking a brisk afternoon stroll for all the effort he was exerting.

They passed floors five, six, seven and eight, and still the elevator they were chasing continued its ascent. For all he knew, his earlier quip about ascending to the very summit of the tower might very well come back to haunt him.

He was pumping his limbs with such monotonous regularity now that it came as a shock when Kranda’s voice sounded in his ear-piece, “Stop!”

Ellis came to a halt, his senses reeling at the sudden cessation of movement.

Kranda was peering into the corridor. The elevator door was opening, its Sporelli cargo stepping out and striding down the corridor. Kranda ducked back as the officers passed. She waited for a count of five, then stepped out.

Ellis followed her, finding himself in a corridor wider and more sumptuous than the one on the ground floor. Which, he reasoned, was to be expected if this was the floor where the all-powerful ruler of Sporell had his living quarters.

Thick carpet cushioned the floor, and hanging on the walls, instead of the hagiographic images of the president in a variety of self-aggrandising poses, were pictures of bleak, snow-covered landscapes.

The officials came to a halt before a door at the very end of the corridor. The young security man palmed a sensor and seconds later the door opened a fraction. He spoke to someone within the room and the door opened to admit the party.

Kranda and Ellis sprinted to join the group and slipped inside after them.

Kranda sidestepped to the left, choosing an area of blank white wall against which to blend – rather than the wall to the right which was adorned with more pictures of icy landscapes. Ellis joined her and looked across the room.

His heart skipped when he saw Calla, and at the very same second she looked up with a fleeting startled expression on her angelic features.

Ellis stared at her thin white face, her startling cobalt eyes. He recalled their time together on Phandra, her selflessness, and he tried to discern in her appearance any sign of hardship or ill-treatment she might have suffered at the hands of the Sporelli.

She seemed, to his relief, as serene and composed as ever.

She sat on a stool beside a shrunken figure in an invalid carriage.

At first glance, Ellis found it hard to credit that this was the robust, thick-set president the propaganda would have the citizens of Sporell believe was the world’s glorious leader. He was grey and emaciated, a crooked shell of a man eaten away by some illness the Sporelli, obviously, were unable to remedy.

Only the eyes – the dark, deep-set eyes – were familiar from the propaganda. In their inky depths was some flicker of the man President Horrescu had once been.

Ellis looked at Calla again, finding her own vitality life-affirming. She was looking down at her hands folded demurely on her lap.

The security man addressed the president with stammering deference. Horrescu looked up, something steely in his eyes, and snapped a reply.

Ellis commanded his varnika to translate, and the Sporelli words were rendered intelligible.

“...apologies,” the young man said. “Commander Yehn demanded to see you, claiming information vital to your security.”

The commander, Yehn, stepped forward. “With all due deference, I have information for your ears only, Mr President.” He gestured to the young man and his security aides. “If we could be alone. And the Phandran” – he almost spat – “must be removed.”

At this the young security officer bristled. “The Phandran is a Healer, sir, brought here especially...”

President Horrescu looked up, pinning Commander Yehn, then the security officer, with his death’s-head gaze. “Mr Jemery, take your team and wait outside. The Phandran remains.”

“But, sir –” Jemery began.

“Outside!” the president snapped.

The young official turned on his heel and, his team following, quickly exited the room.

Commander Yehn said, “And the girl...?”

“She is the only thing keeping me alive, Commander. Her powers are remarkable. I need her proximity, if you don’t object
too
much?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“So... this information vital to security, Commander Yehn? But before we start – a drink?”

“Not, sir, while I am on duty.”

The president gestured to Calla, and she slipped off her stool and pushed his invalid carriage towards a vast window that occupied the entirety of the far wall. There, a horse-shoe arrangement of loungers was positioned before the view. Commander Yehn sat down, severely upright, as if even to be seated while on duty was against some code of martial conduct.

Calla perched herself on a lounger beside the president.

“Sir, I reported the pursuit of the human pilot on Phandra –” Yehn began.

“And his subsequent escape,” the president put in, with a note of acerbity.

“I would, with deference, term it not so much an escape, as a... rescue, sir, by a Mahkan equipped with an exo-skeleton. He was responsible for the deaths of more than twenty of my men.”

“So you mentioned in your original report, Commander. The fact remains, you allowed the human to escape. That was costly. Very costly.” He paused, then said slyly, “Are you here to impart the glad tidings that you have managed to apprehend the errant human?”

Commander Yehn said through gritted teeth, “No sir. But we have made a significant discovery.”

The president gestured to Calla, who laid a hand on his shoulder and closed her eyes as if in concentration. After a moment, President Horrescu sighed. “Go on, Commander.”

“In pursuing the human and the Mahkan, sir, we discovered a great dropshaft in a mountainside on D’rayni. On further inspection, we discovered that the construction gave access to the very core of the world. Not only that, sir, but at the world’s core we found a transportation system that...” he smiled as he said this, as if hardly crediting his own words, “that links every world of the Helix. It can only be the work of the Builders, sir, and now the sole province of the Mahkan.”

President Horrescu sat forward in his chair. “And you managed to access the transportation system, and its operating methodology?”

Commander Yehn allowed himself a prideful smile. “Yes, sir.”

The president sat back, taking in this information. “And do you know if the Mahkan are aware of our discovery?”

“I... I ordered my men to cover their tracks, conceal any evidence of our entry,” Commander Yehn said. “However, in pursuing the Mahkan and the human, I lost several of my men.”

“In other words, you are trying to tell me that the Mahkan know that we know about the dropshaft?”

Yehn said, “Unfortunately, that is so. However, the immediate benefits of discovering the transportation system are considerable.”

President Horrescu considered his words, then said, “There are both advantages, Commander, and disadvantages...”

Ellis glanced at Kranda, wishing he could discern the Mahkan’s expression as she listened to the president.

Commander Yehn leaned forward. “Knowledge of the transportation system is to our great advantage, sir. But how in future to go about its utilisation without alerting the Mahkan? They are an advanced race, sir. Their technology surpasses –”

“I am very well aware of the Mahkan, Commander, and their present capabilities!” the president snapped. “But the Mahkan do not worry me in the slightest.”

The commander looked non-plussed. “Sir?”

Instead of replying immediately, the president stared at his commander for long seconds. At last he said, “You have proved to be one of my most competent and loyal officers, Commander Yehn. I am blessed to be served by men of your calibre.”

“Sir, I am honoured to serve...”

Horrescu swept on, “I have long harboured desires to... let us say... access the potential of the many worlds of the Helix. In my opinion, the resources of the construct are under-utilised. I disagree with the ethos of the Builders, mighty though that race once was. They have long since passed from power, handing the role of Peacekeepers to a feeble and ineffective race.” Horrescu leaned forward. “It is my belief, from long study of the natural world, that the strong and the brave outlive the peaceable and the cautious. I use this as my dictum. The Sporell are strong and we are brave.”