Helix Wars (45 page)

Logically, coldly, Ellis saw the sense of Kranda’s words. At the same time he could not condone the killing of those who were only following orders.

He said, “As a last resort, Kranda. Okay? Only when we’ve exhausted every other possibility.”

“By then, Jeff, it might be too late.”

He thought about it. “Once we find out where we’re heading, we’ll be in a better position to work out what we’re going to do.”

“I do not agree. By the time we arrive, by the time they make the rendezvous... by then, we might not be in a position to act effectively.”

“So you want to go off, find the others and kill them one by one.”

“I was about to suggest we do it together, Jeff. But on second thoughts, I rather think your presence might be more of a liability.”

He was glad he could not make out the expression of contempt he suspected was on the Mahkan’s face. “There is another way we could handle this.”

“Which is?”

“We have the element of surprise, agreed? And the invulnerability of near-invisibility. Not to mention superior weaponry...”

“You are stating the obvious.”

“What I’m suggesting is that, at some point, we apprehend the president. Threaten him with death if his team attempts to attack us.”

The silence that greeted his words was indicative of the Mahkan’s disdain. At last she said, “And in so doing we put ourselves at increased risk. It is a problematic scenario, incurring too many unseen and unknown variables. Can you tell me, once we have the president in our custody, how we proceed? We have the golden goose, as the human saying goes, but what do we demand from the Sporelli? That we turn around and go back? That the president divulges his super-weapon and his grand plan?” She snorted with contempt. “The idea is weak, Jeff. Have you considered this: we hold the president and threaten his death, and thereby play to the ambitions of Commander Yehn. He might gladly order our deaths and in so doing consign the president to death – and propel himself into a position of power. As I said, there are too many variables in the scenario for us to be confident of a satisfactory outcome.”

“In that case, perhaps we should wait until we learn more about the president’s plans?”

“A second-best plan of action, human, but I tell myself that I am here because you saved my life on D’rayni...”

Ellis muttered, “Don’t remind me.”

He stared through the screen at the landscape rolling by below. They might have been just outside the Sporell capital, so similar was the flat farmland. He scanned the horizon for signs of mountains or even hills, but the viewscreen showed only a perfectly level terrain.

The sun was setting in their wake, and the interworld ship was heading for the planet’s nightside, which meant that they could not be heading towards any of the neighbouring worlds. Kranda picked up on this. “Curious. We must be heading north, or south.”

“That doesn’t make sense. We’re heading for a destination somewhere here on Sporell?”

Kranda said, “Krell – where the unmarked space vessel came down – is north of the capital, yes?”

“According to what the president said,” Ellis affirmed.

“Perhaps, then, we are making for Krell. Maybe, Jeff, we have yet to pick up this super-weapon.”

“Then that might be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for.”

He sat against the bulkhead and drew his thighs to his chest. He rested his forehead on his knees and closed his eyes. He’d slept fitfully in the president’s lounge last night, waking often. Now he took the opportunity to doze.

Kranda nudged him awake some time later.

He stared suddenly. “We’re there?”

He stared through the viewscreen, and could not believe what he was looking at.

Kranda said, “You’ve been out an hour, Jeff. Nothing much has happened, other than...”

No longer was the grey monotonous landscape of Sporell displayed. Now, the viewscreen before them was filled by the black velvet immensity of deep space, speckled with a dusting of stars.

3

T
HERE WAS MOVEMENT
on the flight-deck below. Calla pushed the president towards the exit. Kranda whispered, “By my calculations, it is night-time in the capital city. The president will be due his beauty sleep.”

Minutes later the swing door to the mezzanine flapped open and Ellis tensed. He relaxed when he made out Calla’s slim form hurrying towards them.

She crouched down beside where he and Kranda sat against the bulkhead, staring in their approximate direction.

Ellis reached out and took her hand.

She whispered urgently, “There have been developments, as you can see.” She indicated the screen.

“What’s happening, Calla?”

“I was with the president when he told Commander Yehn of his plans,” she said in a small voice. “Unfortunately my grasp of the Sporelli language is basic, and I did not understand everything.”

“But do you know what we’re doing out here?” Kranda asked.

“First, Horrescu told Yehn about the ship at Krell. He said that it was... he used an unfamiliar word, but I translated it as ‘emissary.’ The ship was from far away, but the odd thing was that it was crewed by Sporelli, though only one crew member survived when the ship crash-landed.”

Ellis stared at her. “From far away?” He shook his head. “Could there be another Sporelli race on the Helix?”

“That is what I thought, at first. But how could this be? Why would the Builders place one set of Sporelli on one world, and another set on another, distant world?” She gestured, spreading her hands wide. “Then Commander Yehn asked the president something that I did not catch, and Horrescu replied. Suddenly, it all made sense.”

“What?” Ellis asked, leaning forward.

“Horrescu explained that the ship at Krell came not from another world on the Helix, but from
beyond
the Helix.”

Ellis shook his head. “Beyond the Helix?”

Kranda said, “Did you learn
where
it came from, Calla?”

She frowned. “Horrescu did not say, or if he did then I did not understand. However, I assumed, because it was crewed by Sporelli...”

Ellis finished for her, incredulously, “That it came from the Sporelli original world, from which they were taken millennia ago?”

“According to Horrescu,” Calla said, “his people had been liaising with the emissary ship on its approach to the Helix. He guided it to their world.”

Kranda asked, “But do you know
why
the ship came here? Did the president say?”

“That was one of Commander Yehn’s questions. And the president replied that they had come here to re-establish contact.”

Ellis said in wonder, “They were from the original Sporelli homeworld. Their race survived, established the whereabouts of those Sporelli taken by the Builders, and came here in search...”

Calla inclined her head. “This is what I inferred from Horrescu’s explanation, yes.”

A silence greeted her words, broken when Kranda asked the obvious question, “And now, the reason we are leaving the Helix?”

For a vertiginous second, Ellis wondered if the interworld ship might be attempting to make the voyage
back
to the original Sporelli world... but that would be impossible; the interworld ship was not equipped with a light-drive capable of taking it to the stars.

Calla stared from Kranda to Ellis, and said, “We have come here to meet a starship that has travelled three hundred light years from the Sporelli homeworld. It is, according to President Horrescu, a vast ship carrying over half a million Sporelli troops. And its mission, he said, is to invade the Helix. The president intends to meet it, and guide it to the Helix, where he will issue an ultimatum to the Builders, or their representatives: submit to the rule of the Sporelli, or face annihilation.”

The ugly belch of a klaxon sounded through the ship.

Calla sprang to her feet. “That is the signal for the Sporelli ship’s approach. Horrescu said that I must go to him when the signal sounds.”

She moved to the swing-door and hurried through.

Ellis climbed to his feet and approached the rail overlooking the flight-deck.

A minute later the president, with Calla, rolled into the chamber and halted before the wrap-around viewscreen. He snapped an order at the pilot and told Calla to push him closer to the viewscreen. Something like insane eagerness showed on the tyrant’s ravaged features.

Ellis transferred his attention to the screen, and stared in amazement.

He was accustomed to sleek, aerodynamic interworld ships and shuttles, vessels designed with aesthetics in mind. What appeared before them, hanging in space and filling almost half the screen, was neither sleek nor aesthetically pleasing. It resembled a bloated deep-sea fish, some grotesque bottom-feeder whose appearance was designed to scare off would-be predators.

Ellis whispered to Kranda, “How big is that thing?”

She hesitated, and then said, “According to the pilot’s console, it’s still twenty kilometres away.”

“Vast, then.”

“I estimate, no less than ten kilometres from head to tail. But if it contains half a million Sporelli troops, then it would have to be.”

Ellis swore, and felt his guts turn to liquid. “What the hell do we do?”

“Jeff, I am out of ideas at the moment. I’ll tell you if anything occurs to me. You?”

He shook his head in silence, although the Mahkan would be unable to see the gesture. “I honestly don’t know, Kranda.” He smiled to himself. “Even killing every Sporelli aboard this ship wouldn’t help, now, would it?”

“Do you know something, human? This time, I think I agree with you.”

The minutes elapsed, and the Sporelli ship came closer with every second. Soon it filled the screen. Before it, he thought, the interworld ship must resemble a minnow before a whale. All he could make out was excoriated exterior shields, antennae like kilometre-long barbels, and vast lettering in a script which only slightly resembled that which he had seen back on Sporell.

Eventually the viewscreen flashed and the image of the ship was replaced by that of a flight-deck. A blue-faced Sporelli woman in a maroon uniform stared out.

She spoke, and Ellis’s varnika responded with, “We [untranslatable] [untranslatable], and then [untranslatable]. Proceed.”

President Horrescu replied, evidently more adept at translating this variant on his own tongue. “Understood,” the varnika translated. “I look forward to making your acquaintance, Captain.”

The woman’s face disappeared, to be replaced by the starship. They were even closer now, judging by the size of the ugly Sporelli lettering.

The president barked an order, and the pilot responded. The interworld ship adjusted course, minimally, and a lighted recess set into the hull of the starship swung into view.

Slowly, the interworld ship eased itself into the cavernous hangar.

T
WENTY-
T
WO
/// V
IRTUAL
R
EALM

1

M
ARIA,
D
AN
S
TEWART
and the rest of the liaison team left the shuttle and drove in a ground-effect vehicle across a high, rocky plateau surrounded by a sea of sand.

Maria had expected her party to be first on this hostile, uninhabited world. As they drove north across the flat windswept rock, however, she made out in the distance a collection of domes and what looked like a row of open-ended marquees, the silver fabric dazzling in the sunlight. A reception committee of half a dozen humans and a Mahkan awaited their arrival.

She was still smarting at the fact that Dan’s wife, Sabine, had reneged on her word to let her husband see more of her. Their marriage was effectively over, so why couldn’t the stupid woman realise this and give in with good grace? Then again, she thought, would
she
so easily give up someone she loved?

They arrived at the domes and marquees strung out in a long semi-circle. Before them, the sand that covered the rest of the plateau was absent in an oval area, revealing a nexus of silver wires like the surface of some vast, futuristic game-board.

Within the domes and marquees, scientists worked at com-terminals and softscreens, and beneath the open tents, other members of the liaison team consulted banks of equipment. Maria made out around a hundred cables snaking out across the rock to the silver grid.

One of the domes bore a red cross, and Maria found it fully equipped with everything she would need to assure the health of the team for the next few days.

She returned outside, into the merciless heat of the sun, and crossed to where Dan was chatting to a tall Mahkan and four humans, one of whom was his deputy, Victor Gonzalez.

Dan introduced her as the resident medic and she shook hands with the three strangers – a woman in the red uniform of the Peacekeepers and two government representatives. She offered her hand to the Mahkan, who merely stared at her with its inscrutable lizard eyes and kept its claws by its side.