Helix Wars (44 page)

“We can’t make a move while they’re there,” Kranda said. “I presume they’ll be going with the convoy.”

The military vehicles moved off one by one, the staff car carrying Commander Yehn leading the way. A sliding door in the wall of the tower opened briefly and an armoured car emerged, its windows darkened: presumably the vehicle carried the president and Calla. It inserted itself into the convoy and slipped from the courtyard.

Only when the last vehicle moved off did the guards with the heat-seekers leave their positions. They unshouldered the devices and sprinted towards the last troop-carrier in line.

Ellis said, “How far away do we follow? The soldiers with the heat-seekers will be scanning –”

Kranda interrupted. “I’ve thought of that. Follow me.”

Ellis followed, wondering at the Mahkan’s plan. They passed the last troop-carrier in seconds – the guards were still scrambling aboard, jeered at good-naturedly by their colleagues – and Kranda made a bee-line for a black, beetle-shaped tank.

“What now?” Ellis said as they jogged behind the vehicle.

“Now we climb up and hitch a ride,” said the Mahkan.

“Are you mad?”

“If we sit before the engines, Jeff, they will disguise our own heat signatures.”

She scrambled aboard the tank, dragging Ellis after her.

They sat side by side, knees drawn up, their backs against the warm metal of the engine cowling. Immediately behind them was a rocket-launcher. The pair of Sporelli troops in the cab seemed to be staring out directly at Ellis and Kranda. He looked away, his flesh crawling, and wondered if a Mahkan exo-skeleton had ever suffered a power failure.

The convoy left the tower and trundled along the encircling boulevard. A dozen or so citizens stopped to watch. A buzz passed through the gathering, as if they had guessed that the armoured car might be carrying their beloved president.

“They live miserable, circumscribed lives under a ruthless dictator, Kranda, and they adulate the man.”

The Mahkan touched Ellis’s shoulder. “Look into the sky, Jeff. What do you see?”

He looked up and saw a dark, ugly legend, which his varnika translated as, ‘Your president has made Sporell secure against outside enemies. Never has our world been so safe!’ And the message alternated with an image of the president, smiling and waving to a cheering crowd.

Kranda said, “They know nothing else. From birth they have been fed this lie. They lead humdrum lives, with little heat, food, or amusements, knowing nothing of their relative privations, nothing of how other people on other worlds live – in freedom and with plenty. The word for it is
brainwashed
.”

Ellis recalled reading Friday Olembe’s account of humankind’s arrival on the Helix, and how they encountered the Agstarnians who knew nothing of life on other worlds thanks to the cloud cover which blanketed their skies and hid the Helix from view. They, in their own way, had been as blinkered as the Sporelli were now.

“If they could be made aware of how others lived...” he began.

Kranda said, “Who knows? Perhaps, when we have overcome the president, they will.”

Ellis smiled.
A long way to go before that
, he thought.

They had left the centre of the city behind, and with it the vast, monolithic buildings of government. Now they were passing through residential suburbs, row after row of identical grey blocks, ten stories high, their windows lit by wan yellow lights which did little to dispel the prevailing gloom.

The most amazing thing about the city, Ellis thought, was the total absence of colour. He had not noticed it at first, having much else on his mind, but now the fact hit him hard. All he could see, wherever he looked, were graduated monochrome shades from matt black through to dull pewter. There were no trees or plants in sight, not even the colourless cacti so beloved of the president. There were no street-signs or advertisements, and the only paint that adorned the buildings, whether municipal or residential, was battleship grey. He wondered if such a proscription on colour was a psychological ploy of those who ruled, a further tool used to subjugate the masses, or simply the effect of a subdued economy.

Then he looked up, and had the answer. There was colour up there: President Horrescu’s face was positively sky blue, his eyes bright, and the red and white Sporell flag fluttered at his shoulder. The people of the planet saw colour, and perhaps hope, when they looked up into the heavens and beheld their leader.

Soon they left the last of the grey dwellings in their wake and passed into the countryside.

If Ellis had been hoping for some relief from the dull tones of the city, he was sadly disabused. Even here, in the flat land surrounding the capital city, a monochrome uniformity prevailed. Field after field was planted with the same dull green vegetable – some kind of cabbage – and even the tractors tending the crops sported the obligatory grey livery.

“Look,” Kranda said suddenly.

A troop-carrier was racing past the crawling convoy, and mounted on its roof were the three guards and their heat-seekers. As they passed, they panned the devices across the barren countryside, as if insurgents might be lurking amongst the crops. He wondered how they might react if they discovered the insurgents had been beneath their noses all along.

Then he thought ahead to what might await them at the spacefield, and his amusement gave way to apprehension.

He said, “And if the president is leading an interworld ship to invade Mahkan or New Earth?”

Kranda was silent for a time, before replying, “We board the ship with him, assess if that’s what he intends, and perhaps threaten him with the destruction of his precious vessel.” Ellis heard her slap the metal of her weapon. “Remember what I told you about our blasters’ dual function.”

Ellis smiled. Primed, they would become lethal nuclear bombs. “Fine, Kranda. But we’d be calling their bluff. How could we plant the blasters aboard their interworld ship without forfeiting our own lives?”

Kranda reached out and gripped Ellis’s arm. She said, “If it came to saving your world by giving your life, Jeff, would you do it?”

She fell silent, leaving time for Ellis to consider her question.

He said, “Would you, Kranda?”

“Undoubtedly,” she replied at once. Then, “And you?”

“I... I honestly don’t know...”

They fell silent, contemplating the flat farmland on either side. Nothing had changed over the course of the last twenty kilometres: the same crops grew in the fields – did the Sporell eat nothing but cabbage? – and the same ugly grey tractors moved back and forth like clockwork toys.

Kranda touched his arm. “I think we approach the spacefield...”

To their right the fields gave way to acre after acre of flat grey tarmac, graced only by the occasional makeshift building and stationary flier. The field was surrounded by a zigzag cordon of razor-wire and patrolled by guards.

A kilometre further on, Ellis saw the first signs of activity on the spacefield. Fliers came and went, and he wondered if this was part of the war effort. He was answered minutes later when one of the fliers disgorged troops carrying loaded stretchers. He wondered if the casualties considered their sacrifices worthwhile; the depressing thing was that he thought they probably would.

The convoy slowed. Kranda touched his arm. “There...”

Ellis looked across the tarmac and made out the interworld ship. It appeared identical to the one on D’rayni which had accounted for Kranda’s flier. For all he knew, it might have been the very same one – a fat, front-loading toad of a thing whose ramp resembled a great waiting tongue.

The convoy slowed to a crawl as it came to the main gate. It turned, and minutes later the tank on which Ellis and Kranda were hitching a lift rattled across the tarmac towards the interworld ship.

Ellis watched, with increasing trepidation, as the convoy came to a halt before the ship. The only vehicle which climbed the ramp was the president’s armoured car. Ellis had expected the interworld ship to take the whole convoy but, as he watched, the president’s security team boarded the ship on foot, followed by Commander Yehn. The rest of the convoy remained on the tarmac.

Ellis said, “Look.”

The troop-carrier bearing the soldiers with the heat-seekers had pulled up before the ship. The three jumped down smartly and deployed themselves at the foot of the ramp.

Kranda lost no time. Hauling Ellis after her, she dived from the tank and sprinted towards the ramp. As he ran he watched, the troops shoulder the bulky heat-seekers and calibrate their settings. He had seconds before they swung the devices in his direction.

But seconds would be sufficient, especially if he increased his pace. He sprinted across the tarmac and up the ramp behind Kranda, passing within a metre of the nearest heat-seeker.

Seconds after he entered, Ellis heard the ramp rise slowly, followed by a deafening
crack
as the great hydraulic hatch sealed itself behind them.

2

T
HEY WERE IN
the cavernous hold of the interworld ship, a stygian chamber stinking of oil and machine parts. The armoured car disgorged its occupants, the president in his invalid carriage propelled by Calla. If she noted their presence, as she hurried with the president towards the elevator, she gave no sign. They were followed by Commander Yehn and the president’s security officials.

When the lift door sighed shut on the party, Ellis and Kranda found themselves alone in the yawning hold. Kranda crossed to a ladder welded to the bulkhead. “Safer than the elevator.”

She climbed, and Ellis gripped the rungs and pulled himself up after her. A minute later he stepped onto a gallery overlooking the hold. Kranda led the way to a double doorway with a lighted corridor beyond.

Kranda paused before pushing through. “We proceed with caution. They might not be able to detect us now, but who knows what devices the ship might harbour?”

Ellis nodded. “Understood.”

Kranda peered through the transparent window set into the swing door, ensured that there was no one beyond, and pushed it open. Ellis followed. They were in a narrow corridor leading to a flight of steps at the far end. As they set off along the corridor, the ship’s engines ignited and the vessel vibrated alarmingly. Kranda laughed and called out over the rising din of the engines, “Poor engineering, Jeff!”

They climbed the steps. The interworld ship laboured to take off, turned sluggishly on its axis, and accelerated away from the spacefield.

“If the Sporelli do have a secret weapon,” Kranda said, “and it’s of the same calibre as this tin can, then we have nothing to worry about.”

“Something tells me,” Ellis said as he followed the Mahkan up the steps and along another corridor, “that the president wouldn’t be as confident as he appeared if he didn’t have a...”

Kranda laughed. “A super-weapon?”

Ellis tried to smile. “Something like that.”

They came to a bulkhead, and a sealed hatch bearing a Sporelli legend. Kranda said, “An elevator to the bridge.” She looked right and left and found what she was looking for. “This way.”

Ellis followed the Mahkan up a tight spiral staircase. As they approached the top, Kranda slowed. They passed through a swing door and found themselves on a semi-circular mezzanine overlooking an oval flight-deck. Cautiously Ellis approached the rail and peered down.

The ship’s pilot, co-pilot and flight-engineer occupied gimballed seats before a banked control console, above which was a wraparound viewscreen. Through it, the flat landscape of Sporell scrolled, endlessly featureless. They were flying close to the ground, and he wondered in which direction the ship was travelling: towards D’rayni, or the other way – to New Earth and Mahkana?

Behind the pilots were President Horrescu, Calla, Commander Yehn and the security officer. Of the other members of the security team, there was no sign. He found Kranda and murmured, “The others must be elsewhere. We need to be careful.”

She touched his arm and led him around the gallery so that they had a better view of the president and Calla. She was standing at his side, staring silently ahead through the viewscreen.

As Ellis watched, Calla looked up briefly, and a slight smile played on her lips as she sensed their presence.

President Horrescu and Commander Yehn were conferring in lowered tones. Ellis upped the volume, but even so he was able to make out only the occasional word. “Duration... rendezvous... our reception...”

He murmured to Kranda, “What are they saying?”

“Something about the reception they’ll get when they... meet whoever they’re destined to rendezvous with. It wasn’t clear.”

Down below, the president and his commander fell silent. Yehn saluted and strode from the bridge.

“What now?” Ellis asked.

Kranda considered. At last she said, “Sit tight. Listen. Sooner or later we’ll learn something...” She fell silent, then began, “I...”

“Go on.”

“If I were alone, or rather if I were to disregard your proscription on killing the Sporelli... then I would find the other members of the security team and eliminate them. That way, we would have only the president and the pilots to deal with.”