Helix Wars (5 page)

He saw movement beneath the tree. Yet another pod was moving through the wreckage, approaching Travers’ shattered corpse.

He heard a sound to his right and turned in alarm.

Five metres away, a pod was shuffling towards him. He swore out loud and backed towards the stream. The pod changed its course, fractionally, to compensate for its prey’s evasion, and came towards him with stoic, unhurried persistence.

He looked around for a branch with which to club the thing, but saw none. Very well, then; he would lash out with his feet when it came within range. He was moving as fast as he was able, towards the stream, but the pod was shuffling a little faster. He wondered if he would make it to the water before the pod reached him. Then, he thought with sudden relief, he would pitch himself into the river and, despite the pain, swim downstream and evade the vegetable monster.

The pod was a couple of metres from his trailing feet, its crimson tentacles questing blindly after him. He wondered how it had detected him, and with what senses it now charted his progress.

A metre from the river, a thought struck him. What if the water, mid-stream, was not deep enough to allow him to swim, and he was in effect stranded there? He wondered if the pod would come in after him.

As if sensing his intentions, the pod reacted.

Something lashed out at him from the wrinkled skin on the upper side of its orifice. Ellis had time to see a flash of crimson tentacle – then cried aloud as it stung his lower leg. He looked down. A small hole showed in the material of his jumpsuit.

Alarmingly, the pod had ceased its remorseless shuffling.

It was waiting.

He took a breath, attempting to quell his fright, and dug his elbows into the ground. He tried to drag himself backwards, away from the patient pod. He felt as if all his strength had left him. Numbness crept up his body, radiating from the pod’s sting. Seconds later he was unable to move his arms and he collapsed onto his back.

At least, staring up into the gossamer cloud of the trees, he would be spared the sight of the pod’s hungry approach. He hoped he would be unconscious before it swallowed him whole.

He realised he was weeping: the one physical ability he could perform. What a stupid, stupid way to die. He wondered if the authorities would ever find his body, a scatter of desiccated bones spat out across the meadow’s floor when the pod-tree had sucked out all his goodness.

He wanted to cry out when something touched his booted feet. He felt his legs rise, as if cushioned on something soft and warm. Slowly, the pod drew him into its maw. He lolled this way and that, paralysed, unable to do a thing to prevent himself from being swallowed alive.

He felt a sudden resentment at the thought of how Maria might take the news of his death. There was something almost dignified about dying in a shuttle accident, at least when compared with being eaten whole by an ambulatory vegetable. In time, Maria would see the funny side of his end, would comment scathingly at dinner parties...

The spongy lips of the creature’s mouth had reached his chest now. He felt a circle of wet warmth around his upper torso. He closed his eyes and wept as the monstrous lips sucked themselves around his neck and head like oversize slugs.

He felt the skin of the pod constrict around his body. He was rapidly losing sensation in his limbs now, for which he was thankful. Perhaps he would be totally insensate when the digestive juices got to work. He opened his eyes, but all he could see was the puckered skin of the pod’s interior, tight across his face, glowing crimson with filtered sunlight.

He moaned as the pod moved, dragging him across the ground towards its parent tree. On the way he hit rocks and bits of wreckage, but whatever had paralysed him had also anaesthetised him to the blows.

Minutes later the pod came to a halt, and he was tipped slowly until he was hanging upside-down. Then, slowly, he was hauled high into the tree-tops, spinning lazily as he went.

At last the ascent came to a halt, and the spinning worked itself out until the only movement was a gentle, side-to-side rocking in the breeze.

He was still weeping, minutes later, when unconsciousness came.

T
HREE
/// S
OPHAN

1

T
HEY WERE HAVING
trouble with the sea bordering an unnamed world, three along from Kranda’s homeworld of Mahkana.

She stood on the edge of the cliff and stared out across the storm-tossed ocean. The Mahkan monitoring agency had reported severe storms lasting almost thirty days, storms which should not have happened and which if they continued were in danger of eroding parts of the world’s western coastline. The agency had brought in a team of meteorologists, and then climatologists, in a bid to solve the problem, but they had reported that the storm’s cause was neither meteorological nor climatological. As a last resort, Kranda’s engineers had been called in to assist.

There was an almost surreal contrast between the condition of the sea, a whipped-up frenzy of troughs and peaks, and the clement weather which prevailed along the coastline. At her back, the monotonously flat plain stretched away for thousands of kilometres, above which a blue sky was unmarked by the slightest cloud. The sky over the sea was clear, too, which made the raging waves below all the more odd.

She knew the ocean’s activity, which initial observers had termed a storm, was nothing of the kind. Storms were the result of weather conditions, and conditions along the coast were fine. The activity of the waves, the surging plunge of grey ocean, was the manifestation of a more fundamental problem. Kranda had her theories, but she was keeping quiet about them until she knew a little more about the situation. There were those in her team, beneath her, who would be eager to capitalise on her slightest error or misjudgement.

Kranda had recently made the transition from male to female, and was still adjusting to the metabolic and mental changes this entailed. She was still negotiating the subtle changes in relationship between herself and the members of her team; it didn’t help that some of her closest rivals had undergone male-female transformation at around the same time. There was too much rivalry, even hostility, in the air at the moment, and there were times when Kranda wished she could just walk away from it all and return to her homeworld.

But that was the cowardly residue of male hormones lingering in her system, she knew. The period immediately after transition was always like this, with old ways of thought and feeling laying their treacherous palimpsest over her new psychological persona. In time, male equivocation and uncertainty would fade, usurped by female certitude and strength.

She could already feel the hormonal aggression at work within her. She had been overly critical of a clerk’s report the other day, and had questioned a colleague’s finding in a way she would never had done as a male. Also, her thoughts of late had been turning with nostalgia and poignancy to her childhood, specifically to the five years of her girlhood, and the long coyti hunts she had undertaken with her hive-mother. She loved the life of an engineer, but always, immediately after undergoing the male-female transition, she longed for the mountains of her homeworld, the familiarity of the hunt, the simple, more aggressive ways of her old female life.

As she stared out to sea, she detected movement other than the chaotic surge of the waves. Something as grey as the ocean emerged from the morass, a streamlined craft that for a second resembled a teardrop flung from the highest wave-crest. Then the vehicle gained solidity as it approached, and running lights and a delta viewscreen became visible. Kranda glanced at her chronometer and smiled to herself: just on time.

The submersible flier banked over the cliffs and came to rest beside her own craft, easing itself down with a sigh of ramrod stanchions. Kranda watched it settle and then crossed the veldt towards the craft, marked along its length with the intertwined lettering of the Mahkan Engineering Corps.

A dropchute fell from its belly and one by one the crew of five emerged.

Three of her team were female, two male. Two of the women had recently made the transition, or
hayanor
, and were consequently testing the boundaries of their new-found aggression, resenting Kranda’s superiority and letting her know about it. To make matters worse, one of the men had recently experienced
hayanor
in reverse, after five years of womanhood. His resentment smouldered, though of course he no longer had the psychological wherewithal to voice his objections to Kranda’s leadership.

The management of her team was often fraught at the best of times, but even more so after multiple
hayanors
.

The men hung back, conversing in low tones. Their sergeant, the woman Farini and Kranda’s greatest rival, stepped forward and presented her softscreen.

“Well?” Kranda asked.

“Read my report,” Farini said, unable even to look Kranda in the eye.

Kranda looked past the grey-snouted Farini to one of the men and said, “Glaran, with me, please.” Glaran had been male now for over four years, and was suitably docile. She gestured to her ship and he followed her. Over her shoulder, she said to Farini, “Take a break. We’ll convene for a meal at noon.”

She sat down on the steps of her flier, gesturing Glaran to sit beside her. Of her team, the small male was her favourite, and while she tried to discourage sexual congress between her team members, she had felt strong urges towards Glaran soon after emerging from her
hayanor
. It did not help matters, she admitted to herself, that Glaran was also a favourite of Farini.

She indicated the softscreen. “Well, was I right, Glaran?”

He smiled. “Of course. We knew you would be. Farini too, although she wouldn’t admit as much.”

“She’ll calm down. I don’t have time to read all this, so if you could précis...”

The small male looked uncomfortable. “Shouldn’t you be asking Farini?”

“Are you questioning my judgement?”

Glaran bridled. “Of course not!”

“Very well then, a précis...”

Glaran said, “The technical co-ordinates are in the report, Sen-Kranda,” he said, using her official title as team leader. “On the sea bottom we discovered evidence of disturbance. Initial analysis suggested accidental tectonic slippage, which has resulted in something...
leaking
, perhaps, from the hub.”

“Or, as I suggested, a disequilibrium of pressure, Glaran. If there’s been a breach on the sea-bed, which there obviously has, then that might explain the surge.”

Glaran nodded tentatively. “That might explain the storm activity, Sen-Kranda. We did detect thermal activity issuing from the vent.”

She smiled. “It’s always nice to be right, Glaran.” She reached out and touched his knee. He looked away. “And it’s also quite pleasing to know that the Builders are not infallible, hm?”

He looked at her, startled at her near-blasphemy. “Sen-Kranda...”

“I’m joking, Glaran,” she said, then, “Did Farini say anything? I mean, did she have an alternative theory?”

“She wouldn’t venture an alternative explanation, Sen-Kranda. As I said, she knew you were right.”

She looked up. “And here she is. On the warpath, by the look on her face.”

Farini strode up to the pair and stared at them. “Must I report you for unprofessionalism?”

“Meaning?”

“You should be discussing these matters with me, as team sergeant, after all.”

Kranda, reasonably, indicated the softscreen. “But I did attempt to,” she pointed out. “As I recall, you advised me to consult the ’screen. As you seemed unwilling to give me an immediate verbal report, I sought one from your deputy.” She glanced at Glaran. “That will be all.”

When he’d hurried away, Kranda stood and faced Farini. “Let’s talk this over like fellow professionals, hm? Glaran reported the finding of tectonic slippage. I diagnose depressurisation. What do you think?”

Mollified, Farini blinked and said, “Yes, that is the most likely explanation.”

They walked away from the ship, turned and paced back again, discussing the slippage and what they should do about it. The rest of her team looked on, perhaps expecting a fistfight. That, Kranda knew, would not happen: she had defused Farini’s anger for the time being.

Five minutes later they were about to return to the others when Farini stopped in mid-sentence, screwing her eyes up as she stared at something flying low over the veldt.

A vast Engineering Corps interworld ship was lumbering towards them. Seconds after it came into view, the dull drone of its engines rumbled over them like thunder.

At first Kranda thought that it was in transit past them, on some mission to a neighbouring world. But the behemoth slowed, eased itself to the ground, and touched down on a hundred flexing stanchions a hundred metres away. The heat of its engines swept across the veldt in a wave, causing Kranda and Farini to turn away and shield their faces.

When she next looked, a ramp was unfolding from the ship’s flank and a Mahkan officer was striding out, flanked by two officials. In her trim crimson uniform, and towering over her underlings, the woman looked imposingly impressive.